Fra Carnevale OP was an Italian painter of the Quattrocento, active mainly in Urbino. Widely regarded as one of the most enigmatic artists, Carnivale has only nine works that can be definitively attributed to him. Most of these have even been contested as authentic to Carnevale at various points in history.
He is cited by a number of names including Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini, Bartolomeo Coradini and Fra' Carnevale.
He was born in Urbino, and entered the order of Dominicans in 1449 under the name of Fra’ Carnevale or Carnovale. He was a pupil of the Ferrarese painter Antonio Alberti. Farquhar claims he was the teacher of Giovanni Santi. Between 1445-1446, he worked in the studio of Filippo Lippi in Florence. Then, sometime before 1450, he returned to Urbino and joined San Dominico. Local scholars show evidence of his activities between 1456 and 1488. During this time, he apprenticed with Fra Jacopo Veneto. He was commissioned for the altarpiece at del Corpus Domini, but ended his work on this in 1456. In 1467, local record shows his payment for the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece. From records, we also know that he was curator of San Cassiano del Cavallino and joined the Confraternità di Santa Croce.
For centuries, the only reference to Carnevale existed in Giorgio Vasari's "The Lives of the Artists." Here, Vasari referred to Carnevale as Carnovale da Urbino, the painter of the altarpiece at Santa Maria della Bella in Urbino as well as the influence behind Bramante's architecture of St. Peter's in Rome. Baldinucci's Dictionary of Masters of Disegno cited Fra Carnevale as a student who was well-known to local scholars with a reputation for excellence in the art of perspective. These scholars also attributed the altarpiece to him. Luigi Lanzi’s 1787 Storia Pittorica dela Italia discusses Fra Carnevale, noting that “Bramante and Raphael studied his work, as nothing better could then be found in Urbino.” Although he was quite harsh in judgement of the perspective used in the altarpiece, he was equally complementary of the architecture. He also was an architect for the portals of San Domenico in Urbino, providing a foundation for the use of perspective and emphasis on architecture in his paintings.
Carnevale surrounded himself with prominent members of local society including lawyer Guido Bonclerici, vicar general to the Bishop Giovanni Battista Mellini, Ottaviano Ubaldini who held power in the court of Urbino, and Matteo di Cataneis who was close to the Lords of Urbino. His paintings reflect this experience within the elitist culture of his society, even more so than would be expected from the member of a prominent religious order. Within his order, he was a spiritual ascetic given the name “carnevale,” which means “lent.”
Carnevale's earliest works showed the influence of Dominico Veneziano. However, based on a payment taken by Fra Carnevale on behalf of Antonio Alberti, the assumption is that he apprenticed with this painter in the 1430s. He therefore arrives in Florence in 1445 "as a pupil not an apprentice which implies his early training was in the Marshes, possibly under the monk Jacopo Veneto; however another document connects him with Antonio Alberti. " Lippi was recognized as “a crucible for artistic experiments by ‘the 1425 generation.’”
Returning to Urbino, at this time he began an architectural project and brought artists from Florence such as Maso di Bartolomeo and Luca della Robbia.
His facial types and technique for articulating drapery folds are recognized from Piero della Francesca. Although his paintings are widely seen as perspectively inaccurate, he uses the motif of architectural backgrounds to his advantage, basing the precision of his style on the influence of his work as an architect. Lomazzo recorded Carnevale as an architect, and the stonework for the cathedral in Urbino is attributed to Carnavale.
The painting, "The Ideal City," very often referred to in books on the theory and history of urban design and housed at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, is one of three similarly styled paintings and arguably attributed to Fra Carnevale. However, the painting is attributed by others to Francesco di Giorgio Martini, partly due to the latter's greater significance at the Urbino court and because the painting refers to architectural themes he refers to in his architectural treatise derived from Leon Battista Alberti's slightly earlier published treatise. This painting shows Carnevale’s strong sense and knowledge of architecture. The linear perspective and the three dimensional details of the building's facades are impeccable, all very much in the style of Carnevale’s work.
Only one of Fra Carnevale's works appears in its original location: in Urbino, Carnevale painted the Federico da Montelfeltro alcove in the Palazzo Ducale. The eight other works attributed to Carnevale include the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece (also known as the Barberini panels or The Birth of the Virgin), an oblong panel in Palazzo Staccoli, The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, The Annunciation, The Coronation of the Virgin with Lippi, The Crucifixion, Saint John the Baptist in the Desert, and A Portrait of Man. Several of these works are often contested in regards to Carnevale's hand-- The Coronation of the Virgin with Lippi, The Crucifixion, Saint John the Baptist in the Desert, and A Portrait of Man all have conflicting opinions regarding their origin. Nonetheless, the 2004 exhibit of Carnevale's works in Milan definitively attributed these nine to the artist friar of Urbino.

More...