Friday, May 27, 2022

Battista Franco Veneziano, called il Semolei (ca. 1510-1561)

Battista Franco
Diana and Actaeon
ca. 1556
oil on canvas
Biblioteca Marciana, Venice

Battista Franco
Personification of Agriculture
with Pomona, Vertumnus, and Ceres

ca. 1556
oil on canvas
Biblioteca Marciana, Venice

Battista Franco
Baptism of Christ
ca. 1555
oil on canvas
(altarpiece)
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Battista Franco
Baptism of Christ (detail)
ca. 1555
oil on canvas
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Battista Franco
The Road to Calvary
1552
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Battista Franco
The Road to Calvary (detail)
1552
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Battista Franco
The Road to Calvary (detail)
1552
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Battista Franco
The Road to Calvary (detail)
1552
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Battista Franco
The Road to Calvary (detail)
1552
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Battista Franco
Fifteen Scenes from the Apocalypse
ca. 1550
vault frescoes
Cappella Grimani,
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Battista Franco
Fifteen Scenes from the Apocalypse (detail)
ca. 1550
vault fresco
Cappella Grimani,
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Battista Franco
Fifteen Scenes from the Apocalypse (detail)
ca. 1550
vault fresco
Cappella Grimani,
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Battista Franco
Fifteen Scenes from the Apocalypse (detail)
ca. 1550
vault fresco
Cappella Grimani,
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Battista Franco
Fifteen Scenes from the Apocalypse (detail)
ca. 1550
vault fresco
Cappella Grimani,
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Battista Franco
Fifteen Scenes from the Apocalypse (detail)
ca. 1550
vault fresco
Cappella Grimani,
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

"Initially no less close an imitator of Michelangelo, but in a way assertively opposite – concerned with Michelangelo's demonstrations of form but disregarding what he meant to be its human content – was Battista Franco Veneziano (il Semolei).  Franco appeared in Rome at the age of twenty and dedicated himself for a span of years to the exclusive study of Michelangelo's art, but as a draughtsman only.  . . .  The reception given in Rome to this naŃ—ve extreme of the cult of Michelangelo was unsympathetic, and Franco left to practise elsewhere.  From about 1545 to 1551 he was mostly in Urbino.  . . .  By 1554 Franco had returned finally to his native Venice, but even before this he had begun to yield, in Urbino, to influences from the Venetian school.  Still, his first Venetian works made propaganda there for a mode of Romanism, though not at a level which, in the Venetian community of the time, could have carried much weight.  The process that had begun before his return, of readjustment towards a Venetian style, accelerated rapidly.  Franco was by no means the sole painter in Venice to profess a Romanist aesthetic.  Nevertheless, the authenticity of his Roman experience, compared with that of Venetian colleagues of similar inclination, made him more distinct than they within a Venetian context and lent his production a measure of authority that theirs did not always have."    

– S.J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (1970)

Battista Franco after Michelangelo
Noli me tangere
ca. 1537
oil on panel
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio