The Louvre: Fifty Plates in ColourBrockwell, Maurice W.
History
The Louvre: Fifty Plates in Colour
Brockwell, Maurice W.
Musée du Louvre
The Church of S. Giorgio fuori le Mura at Ferrara also at one time
contained another altarpiece painted by Cosimo Tura. It was placed
over the altar of St. Maurelius, but has long ago been dismembered.
One of its panels is the _Flight into Egypt_, in the collection of
Mr. R. H. Benson; two others, representing a _Scene from the Life
of St. Maurelius_ and _The Martyrdom of St. Maurelius_, are in the
Ferrara Gallery; another is the _Adoration of the Magi_, in the
possession of the Contessa di Santa Fiora, in Rome; while a fifth, the
_Circumcision_, belongs to the Marchesa Passeri, in Rome.
The Louvre possesses an arched panel of _A Monk_ (No. 1557) by Tura.
The panel is split and the cheek of the saint injured.
The seriousness of purpose which inspired Cosimo Tura was absorbed by
his pupil Francesco Cossa (1435-1477), whose art is not seen at the
Louvre. One of Cossa’s pupils was Lorenzo Costa, who in 1483 passed
from Ferrara to Bologna, to which city he carried the principles of
Tura’s training. Francesco Bianchi (1460-1510) was another of Tura’s
pupils, but he belongs more strictly to the school of Modena. Another
pupil in the studio of the _chef d’ecole_ of Ferrarese painting was
Ercole Roberti (1430?-1496), who also worked at Padua. This painter,
whose full name was Ercole de’ Roberti Grandi, has been justly claimed
as the author of the two small panels representing _St. Apollonia_ (No.
1677A), holding in her hand the pincers, the symbol of her martyrdom,
and _St. Michael_ (No. 1677B). These companion pictures are officially
described under the ambiguous designation of “Ferrarese School, XVI
century.” They, however, clearly belong to the earlier century, and are
probably by Roberti.
The Louvre contains nothing by Ercole Roberti’s pupil, Ercole di Giulio
Cesare Grandi (1465?-1531). Ercole Grandi’s influence is sometimes seen
in the exceedingly rare pictures of Giovanni Battista Benvenuto, who is
better known under the name of Ortolano (“the gardener”), and takes his
name from the occupation of his father. The art of Ortolano (1460-1529)
is seen to the greatest advantage in the _St. Sebastian, St. Roch, and
St. Demetrius_, in the National Gallery (No. 669). An immature work by
him is apparently the _Nativity_ in this Gallery (No. 1401), which in
the opinion of the compilers of the Catalogue is by Domenico Panetti
(1450?-1512?), a pupil of Lorenzo Costa. Panetti’s works are rarely met
with out of Italy.
Among the pictures of this school, those of Lodovico Mazzolino
(1478?-1528) are perhaps the easiest to recognise. His _Holy Family_
(No. 1387) is not now exhibited, but the _Christ preaching to the
Multitude on the Sea of Galilee_ (No. 1388) is evidently by him,
although it has been ranked by one critic as a Flemish picture painted
under the inspiration of Mazzolino and Dosso Dossi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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