Bartolomeo Cincani

Bartolomeo Cincani was born under that family name and later adopted the name by which history knows him, Bartolomeo Montagna. His exact birth date and birthplace are not settled in the surviving record. Sources give varying estimates, from about 1447 to a date simply described as before 1459, and one auction catalogue note places his birth in Orzinuovi around 1449 to 1450, a detail not corroborated by the major museum and encyclopedic sources consulted here. The Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogues his birth year as before 1459, a convention indicating that his existence is documented prior to that date without fixing an exact year.

He worked principally in Vicenza, with documented activity also in Venice, Verona, and Padua. His painting shows the clear influence of Giovanni Bellini and an appreciation for Antonello da Messina, both filtered into a Vicentine idiom of solid, carefully modeled figures set against detailed landscape and architectural backgrounds. Surviving devotional works, including panels of the Madonna and saints such as Saint Justina of Padua, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are typical of his output for churches and private patrons in the Veneto.

Bartolomeo Montagna died on 11 October 1523 in Vicenza, a date and place confirmed by both a specialist reference on pre 1800 painting and the Italian Art Society. He is long deceased, and no evidence in current research suggests a separate, contemporary artist working under the name Bartolomeo Cincani.

Modern scholarship treats Montagna as a central figure in the Venetian and Vicentine painting of his era, with academic research (including a doctoral thesis at the University of Warwick) describing him as the caposcuola of the Vicentine school. Museum cataloguing, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, consistently frames his work in relation to Giovanni Bellini's influence and to the broader Venetian tradition. No exact, attributable critical quotations from named critics in major outlets, and no confirmed list of exhibitions or awards, could be verified in current research; this reflects the limits of publicly available documentation for a painter working five centuries ago rather than any judgment on the work itself.

Cincani's market is that of a documented Old Master rather than a living or recently deceased artist with an active gallery relationship. No gallery or estate currently represents him, and his works reach the market only through Old Master auction departments and specialist dealers. Public research did not surface a confirmed, fully sourced all-time auction record, meaning a specific work, price, house, and date, for this artist; a MutualArt artist page exists but its public summary does not disclose verifiable sale-level detail. A 2026 auction listing offered a work catalogued as attributed to Bartolomeo Cincani, called Montagna, with a modest estimate of EUR 5,000 to 6,000, illustrating how attribution qualifiers continue to affect pricing for works that are not securely autograph.

There is no catalogue raisonne for this artist, and no certificate of authenticity program of any kind, since he predates such mechanisms by centuries. Attribution rests on connoisseurship, provenance, and museum scholarship, and some works offered at auction still carry qualifiers such as attributed to rather than a firm attribution. Public price data for the artist is thin and, where available, does not confirm a specific single-lot record. Collectors should also note that his birth date and birthplace are not firmly settled across sources, which is typical for painters of this period and should be treated as an open question rather than a fixed fact.