Carlo Crivelli

An Italian Renaissance painter of conservative Late Gothic decorative sensibility.

Crivelli was born around 1430–35 in Venice to a family of painters, and received his artistic formation there and in Padua. After a century's work in Italian archives, the details of Crivelli's career are still sparse. Crivelli seems to have worked chiefly in the March of Ancona, and especially in and near Ascoli Piceno; there are only two pictures remaining in Venice, in the church of San Sebastiano. He painted in tempera only, despite the increasing popularity of oil painting during his lifetime, and on panels, though some of his paintings have been transferred to canvas. His predilection for decoratively punched gilded backgrounds is one of the marks of the conservative taste, in part imposed by his patrons.