[It. lit. ‘four hundred,’ but used for ‘fourteen hundred’: cf. CINQUECENTO.] The fifteenth century (14[?]), as a period of Italian art, architecture, etc.
1875. 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.
Hence Quattrocentist, ǁ -centista (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,’ Pascarèl, 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.
