‖ quattrocento, n. (and a.)
(kwattroˈtʃɛnto)
[It., lit. ‘four hundred’, but used for ‘fourteen hundred’: cf. cinquecento.]
The fifteenth century (14..), as a period of Italian art, architecture, etc. Also attrib. or as adj.
| 1875 J. H. Pollen Anc. & Mod. Furn. 61 The better known Italian furniture of the quattrocento..is gilt and painted. 1882–3 J. L. Corning in Schaff Encycl. Relig. Knowl. III. 2139 We may include both of these—the quatrocento [sic] and the cinquecento—in the third great period of Christian sculpture. 1921 A. Huxley Let. 31 May (1969) 197 For my taste, at least, Florence is too tre- and quattrocento. 1955 Times 20 May 3/7 The settings [in a film] were purely quattrocento, very scholarly, and very pretty. 1965 F. Raphael Darling xxvi. 131 The pictures started with quattrocento pieces. 1977 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 24 Nov. 36/4 The charming cassone fronts of a minor painter called Apollonio di Giovannie, which look to us like decorative charades in quattrocento costume. 1979 Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts CXXVII. 627/2 We know virtually everything we could hope to know about the decoration of a quattrocento chapel. |
Hence quattroˈcentist, ‖ -cenˈtista (It., with pl. -isti), -centiste (F.), an Italian artist, author, etc. of the 15th c.; also attrib. or as adj.
| 1855 Motley Corr. (1889) I. vi. 182 The wonderful Quattro Centisti of Florence, the painters, I mean, of the fifteenth century. 1873 Ouida Pascarel I. 66 He would bring out from its corner his little old quattrocentiste viol. 1886 Holman Hunt in Contemp. Rev. XLIX. 476, I began to trace the purity of work in the quattrocentists, to this drilling of undeviating manipulation. Ibid. 477 The quattrocentist work..became dearer to me as I progressed. |