Bellano, Bartolommeo (c. 1440–c. 1497)

Paduan sculptor. Strongly influenced by Donatello, under whom he studied, he worked in Florence, Perugia, Rome, and Padua, and in 1479–80 accompanied Gentile Bellini on a visit to Sultan Muhammad II (1430–81) in Constantinople. One of his best-known works is a cycle of ten bronze reliefs of Old Testament stories for Padua Cathedral (1484–88).

The son of a goldsmith, Bellano is first documented in 1456 as an assistant to Donatello in Florence. By 1463 he was probably assisting Donatello with the bronze reliefs for the pulpits of San Lorenzo as his style is discernible in the angular chiselling of several panels. In 1467 he was in Perugia, making a statue of Pope Paul II, and the art historian Vasari claims that he served the pope in Rome too, but by 1468 Bellano had settled again in Padua.

During 1469–72 he executed a marble revetment for the reliquary chest of St Anthony of Padua in the sacristy of the cathedral: the panel of the Miracle of the Mule is characteristic of his angular and linear style of marble carving.