Benozzo Gozzoli, born Benozzo di Lese in the village of Sant'Ilario a Colombano around 1421, had moved with his family to Florence in 1427.
According to Giorgio Vasari, in the early part of his career he was a pupil and assistant of Fra Angelico: some of the works in the convent of San Marco of Florence were executed by Gozzoli from Angelico's design.
In 1444-1447, he had collaborated with Lorenzo Ghiberti and his studio on the Paradise Doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni.
Gozzoli had been in Rome with Fra Angelico on May 23, 1447 called by Pope Eugene IV to carry out the fresco decoration of a chapel in the Vatican Palace.
Later, the two had worked until June 1448 in the Cappella Niccolina for Nicholas V. From 1449 is a banner with Madonna and Child in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, perhaps designed by Angelico.
In Rome he executed also, in Santa Maria in Aracoeli, a fresco of St. Anthony and Two Angels.
Benozzo's last collaboration with Angelico was the vault of the Duomo di Orvieto in Umbria.
He had left Angelico in 1449 and moved to Umbria.
From 1450 is an Annunciation in Narni, signed OPU[S] BENOT[I] DE FLORENT[IA].
In the monastery of San Fortunato, near Montefalco, he has painted a Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, and three other works.
One of these, the altarpiece representing St. Thomas receiving the Girdle of the Virgin, is now in the Lateran Museum and shows the affinity of Benozzo's early style to Angelico's.
He next painted in the monastery of San Francesco, Montefalco, filling the choir with three registers of subjects from the life of the saint, with various accessories, including portrait heads of Dante, Petrarch and Giotto.
This work, completed in 1452, is still marked by the style of Angelico, crossed in places with a more distinctly Giottesque influence.
In the same church, in the chapel of Saint Jerome, is a fresco by Gozzoli of the Virgin and Saints, the Crucifixion and other subjects.
