Cristoforo Cortese

{{Short description|15th-century Venetian miniaturist, illuminator, and head of the Veneto school of illumination}}

{{Infobox artist

| name =

| birth_date = c. 1399

| death_date = 1445

| birth_place = Venice

}}

Cristoforo Cortese (c. 1399–1445) was a 15th-century Venetian miniaturist, illuminator, and head of the Veneto school of illumination; he was the first major artist in Venice to paint in the late Gothic style.{{Cite web|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/iman/hd_iman.htm|title=Manuscript Illumination in Italy, 1400–1600|website=www.metmuseum.org|access-date=2019-01-19}}{{Cite book|title=The Bernard H. Breslauer collection of manuscript illuminations : [catalogue of an exhibition held at the Pierpont Morgan Library, December 9, 1992-April 4, 1993]|author=William M Voelkle|author2=Roger S Wieck|author3=Maria Francesca P Saffiotti|date=1992|publisher=Pierpont Morgan Library|isbn=0875980953|oclc=489571316}} Cortese is widely regarded as the most notable and prolific Venetian illuminator of the first half of the fifteenth century.{{Cite web|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1975.1.2468/|title=Saint Mark the Evangelist and Saint Sinibaldus Venerated by Members of a Lay Confraternity|website=www.metmuseum.org|access-date=2019-01-19}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KV1H6IU-LlQC&dq=Cristoforo+Cortese&pg=PA72|title=Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance|last1=Palladino|first1=Pia|last2=Art|first2=Cleveland Museum of|last3=Francisco|first3=Fine Arts Museums of San|last4=N.Y.)|first4=Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York|date=2003|publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art|isbn=9781588390301|language=en}}

File:Saint_Mark_the_Evangelist_and_Saint_Sinibaldus_Venerated_by_Members_of_a_Lay_Confraternity_MET_DT3607.jpg and Sebaldus by Cortese |alt=]]

Throughout his career, Cortese produced a number of religious, secular, and classical texts. The only documented work by Cortese, however, is St Francis in Glory, an illuminated choir book depicting the death of St. Francis dating from the late 1420s.{{Cite book|title=[Rezension von:] Cohen, Simona: Animals as disguised symbols in Renaissance art. - Leiden : Brill, 2008|author=Campbell, Erin J.|date=2009|oclc=888916894}}{{Cite book|title=The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture, Volume 1|last=Hourihane|first=Colum|publisher=OUP USA|year=2012|isbn=978-0195395365}}

File:Christ_Enthroned_with_David_Playing_a_Psaltery_Cortese.jpg Playing a Psaltery by Cortese]]

The invention of girari is attributed to Cortese; girari being a method of ornamentation with white garlands.