Melozzo da Forlì, Francesco (1438–1494)

Italian painter. A disciple of Piero della Francesca, he was active in Urbino and Rome. A fresco in the Church of SS Apostoli, Rome, is an example of his work which includes characteristic figures of angelic musicians. For Sixtus IV, he painted a fresco celebrating the pope's patronage of the Vatican library.

In Urbino he probably collaborated with the Flemish painter Justus of Ghent (active c. 1460–80) on the portraits of famous men and personifications of the liberal arts for Federigo da Montefeltro's studiolo.

He is said to have been the inventor of a form of foreshortening – sotto in sù – which caused figures on a painted ceiling or interior dome to look as if they were floating overhead in space.