Niccolò di Ser Sozzo Tegliaccio

Niccolò di Ser Sozzo Tegliacci was an Italian painter and manuscript illuminator active in Siena in the mid-14th century. He ranks among the leading panel painters and miniaturists of the Sienese school, although scholars still debate his exact identity.

He is credited with the Assumption that forms the frontispiece of the Caleffo, a register of land and property held in the Archivio di Stato in Siena. Dated around 1334, this is his earliest and best documented work. Other paintings are attributed to him with more caution, among them a dismembered polyptych in the Pinacoteca Civica of San Gimignano and a Virgin and Child now in the Uffizi in Florence.

His style rests on the tradition of Simone Martini and, above all, the Lorenzetti brothers, and it is close to that of Luca di Tomme, with whom he sometimes worked. Yet his reputation rests largely on his manuscript illumination. Antiphonaries and graduals with historiated initials are now scattered among Siena, San Gimignano, Venice and several American collections. His legacy is that of one of the artists who shaped the Sienese school in the Trecento.