Bartolomeo di Fruosino trained in the atelier of the painter Agnolo Gaddi together with Lorenzo Monaco. He collaborated on deluxe manuscripts with Monaco who was the head of the scriptorium at the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence from c. 1400.
There is no consensus on works attributed to Fruosino before 1410, which makes his documented contribution to Acciaiuoli’s Missal particularly important. The only payment to Fruosino recorded in the accounts – one golden florin paid on 30 September 1405 – is for twenty-seven illuminations in a single quire of the Missal. These are probably the twenty-seven ornamental initials painted in two bifolios (fols. 131-132 and fols. 273-274) which Fruosino must have completed and submitted together. Some of the initials sprout caricature-like heads comparable to the caricature-like facial types found in Fruosino’s later works.
