Alesso di Benozzo

Alesso di Benozzo, also known as Alesso Gozzoli, was an Italian Renaissance painter. He was born in Pisa in 1473 and began his career as an assistant to his father, the famous Florentine Benozzo Gozzoli. In 1492 he signed the Tabernacle of the Visitation together with his father, who headed the project, and Alesso's brother, Francesco. Because of their similar styles, the specific contributions of the individual painters are not easy to distinguish, but the art historian Anna Padoa Rizzo has proposed that the more refined and elegant figures are by Alesso, whom documents suggest was Gozzoli's most esteemed son, and that the coarser passages are by Francesco, apparently of lesser renown. Padoa Rizzo in turn identified Alesso as the anonymous artist previously known by two names: the "Maestro Esiguo," invented by Roberto Longhi in reference to the painter's skinny and exiguous figures, and the "Alunno di Benozzo," literally the "student of Benozzo," a nickname invented by Bernard Berenson. His works were also once wrongly assigned to Amedeo Laini, called Amedeo da Pistoia.