Biography

Marmitta was a manuscript illuminator, painter and gem engraver active in Parma in northern Italy. Very little is known about his life and career. The only certain works by him to have been identified are the miniatures in a Petrarch manuscript in the state library in Kassel, the distinctive, quirky style of which shows the influence of the Ferrarese painter Ercole de’ Roberti. On stylistic grounds two further manuscripts are convincingly attributed to Marmitta, a missal commissioned by Cardinal Domenico della Rovere as a gift for Turin Cathedral between 1498 and 1501 (Turin, Museo Civico), and the Durazzo Book of Hours (Genoa, Biblioteca Berio). The Flagellation in the National Galleries of Scotland is one of only a handful of panel paintings by the artist, the most important of which is a large altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints Benedict and Quentin painted for the church of San Quintino in Parma and now in the Louvre, Paris. The style of three pen and ink drawings in the British Museum by Marmitta suggest that he may have been aware of the work of the young Raphael.