Thursday, June 30, 2022

Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431-1506) - Padua to Mantua

Andrea Mantegna
Minerva expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (detail)
1502
tempera and oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Andrea Mantegna
Minerva expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (detail)
1502
tempera and oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Andrea Mantegna
Minerva expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (detail)
1502
tempera and oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Andrea Mantegna
Samson and Delilah
ca. 1495-1506
distemper on canvas
National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna
Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome
ca. 1505-1506
distemper on canvas
National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna
Introduction of the Cult of Cybele (detail)
ca. 1505-1506
distemper on canvas
National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna
Introduction of the Cult of Cybele (detail)
ca. 1505-1506
distemper on canvas
National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna
Introduction of the Cult of Cybele (detail)
ca. 1505-1506
distemper on canvas
National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna
Holy Family with St John the Baptist
ca. 1500
distemper on canvas
National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna
Holy Family with Mary Magdalen
(Castelvecchio Madonna)
1495
tempera on canvas
Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona

Andrea Mantegna
Holy Family
with St Elizabeth and St John the Baptist

ca. 1485-88
distemper and oil on canvas
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Andrea Mantegna
Virgin and Child
with St John the Baptist and Mary Magdalen

1498
tempera on canvas
National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna
St Sebastian
ca. 1480
tempera on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Andrea Mantegna
St Sebastian
ca. 1457-59
tempera on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Andrea Mantegna
St Mark the Evangelist
ca. 1450
tempera and oil on canvas
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

"Mantegna was born near Padua and apprenticed under a local painter called Squarcione.  Believing his talents were being exploited, the ambitious young artist broke their agreement and in 1453 married into the rival Venetian firm of the Bellinis.  He worked in Padua, Verona and Venice before moving to Mantua in 1460, where he spent the rest of his life, developing a painting technique that allowed him to imitate the look of classical sculpture.  Mantegna's scholarly interest in the antique drew him into friendship with humanist scholars like Felice Feliciano.  In 1464 they dressed up as Romans for a boating excursion on Lake Garda.  In 1484 Mantegna was knighted by his Gonzaga patrons, a rare honour for an artist in this period."    

– from curator's notes at the National Gallery, London

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi (active ca. 1467-ca. 1524)

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Study of a Young Man in Profile
ca. 1500
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Study of a Bearded Man in Profile
ca. 1500
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
St Peter and St John the Evangelist
ca. 1495-1505
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Risen Christ
ca. 1515
oil on panel
Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi, Ferrara

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
St Mary Magdalen and St Martha (detail)
ca. 1510
oil on panel
Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Virgin and Child with St Sebastian
ca. 1500-1510
oil on panel
Galleria Estense, Modena

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Virgin and Child with Two Donors
ca. 1505
oil on panel
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Holy Family with St Lucy
1503
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin


Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Adoration of the Shepherds
ca. 1510-15
oil on panel
Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Pala dei Barcaioli
ca. 1492
oil on panel
Chiesa di San Pietro Martire, Murano

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Pala dei Barcaioli (detail)
St John the Baptist and a Bishop Saint
ca. 1492
oil on panel
Chiesa di San Pietro Martire, Murano

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Christ washing the Feet of the Disciples
1500
oil on panel
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Virgin and Child with St Simeon and St Jerome
ca. 1500
oil on panel
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Pan and Syrinx
ca. 1510
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Pietà with St Jerome, St John the Evangelist,
the Virgin, and a Donor

before 1524
oil on panel
Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca' d'Oro, Venice

"Giovanni Agostino da Lodi's signature on a painting in Milan and on a drawing sold at Sotheby's in New York in 1986 were the first clues to rediscovering this important participant in Lombard art.  With these two firm documents, scholars have recently reconstructed this artist's life and work from paintings previously attributed to an artist known as Pseudo-Boccaccino, or Boccaccio Boccaccino of Cremona.  A 1504 receipt for payment to Lodi suggests that he may have lived in Venice for a time, and his many surviving paintings around Venice add evidence to this theory.  After returning to Lombardy, he painted numerous works there.  Giovanni Agostino da Lodi was also an outstanding draftsman.  His red chalk studies of heads, often mistaken for works by Leonardo da Vinci, constitute most of his surviving drawings.  Active in Lombardy and the Veneto, Lodi assimilated Leonardo's Milanese manner, along with Venetian colorism and Albrecht Dürer's Northern European art."

– from curator's notes at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Francesco Raibolini, called Francesco Francia (1447-1517)

Francesco Francia
Adoration of the Child
ca. 1475-1500
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Francia
Portrait of Bartolomeo Bianchini
ca. 1485-95
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Francesco Francia
Dead Christ supported by Angels
ca. 1490
oil on panel
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

Francesco Francia
Venus and Cupid
ca. 1500
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse, Alsace

Francesco Francia
Adoration of the Child
ca. 1500
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Francesco Francia
Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist
ca. 1500-1505
oil on panel
Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia

Francesco Francia
St Cecilia Cycle
Marriage of St Cecilia and Valeriano

1505-1506
fresco
Oratorio di Santa Cecilia, Bologna

Francesco Francia
St Cecilia Cycle
Burial of St Cecilia

1505-1506
fresco
Oratorio di Santa Cecilia, Bologna

Francesco Francia
The Crucifixion
with the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and Job

ca. 1510
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Francia
The Crucifixion
with the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and Job
(detail)
ca. 1510
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Francia and workshop
Dead Christ
ca. 1510
oil on panel
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

Francesco Francia
Pietà
ca. 1510-12
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Francesco Francia
Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist
ca. 1510-15
oil on canvas
Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil

Francesco Francia
The Lamentation
ca. 1510-17
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Francesco Francia
Virgin and Child and St Anne enthroned
with St Sebastian, St Paul, St John the Baptist,
St Lawrence and St Benedict

ca. 1511-17
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery, London

"Francesco Raibolini, known as Francia, was from Bologna.  He was an important artist in his day but his fame was overshadowed by the next generation of High Renaissance painters.  His soft and graceful mature style was mainly based on that of Perugino, and was popular and much imitated around Bologna.  Francia, first trained by a goldsmith in Bologna, was recorded in the Bologna goldsmiths' guild in 1482.  He is first recorded as a painter in 1486.  Vasari, writing in 1568, said that the earlier artists of 15th-century Italy had lacked: a soft blending of colour, first observable in Francia of Bologna and Pietro Perugino.  The people, when they beheld the new and living beauty, ran madly to see it, thinking it would never be possible to improve upon it."

– from curator's notes at the National Gallery, London

Monday, June 27, 2022

Cima da Conegliano (1459-1517) - Venice

Cima da Conegliano
Virgin and Child enthroned
with St James the Greater and St Jerome

1489
tempera on canvas
Museo Civico, Vicenza

Cima da Conegliano
Pietà with the Virgin and Saints
ca. 1490
oil on panel
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Cima da Conegliano
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
with St John the Baptist, St Lucy and Two Angels

ca. 1496-98
tempera and oil on panel
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

Cima da Conegliano
Virgin and Child
1502
oil on panel
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Cima da Conegliano
Incredulity of Thomas
ca. 1502-1504
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Cima da Conegliano
Incredulity of Thomas (detail)
ca. 1502-1504
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Cima da Conegliano
Incredulity of Thomas (detail)
ca. 1502-1504
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Cima da Conegliano
Incredulity of Thomas (detail)
ca. 1502-1504
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Cima da Conegliano
The Lamentation
with St Francis and St Bernardino

ca. 1502-1505
oil on panel
Galleria Estense, Modena

Cima da Conegliano
Christ among the Doctors
1504
oil on panel
National Museum, Warsaw

Cima da Conegliano
Polyptych - St John the Baptist with Saints
ca. 1504-1507
oil on panels
Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista, San Fior

 Cima da Conegliano
Armoured Warrior attacking a Centaur
ca. 1506
oil on panel
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Cima da Conegliano
Virgin and Child with St Francis and St Clare
1510
oil on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Cima da Conegliano
Virgin and Child enthroned
with St John the Baptist and the Magdalen

ca. 1511-13
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Cima da Conegliano
St Peter enthroned
with St John the Baptist and St Paul

1515-16
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Giovanni Battista Cima, called Cima da Conegliano – Venetian painter from Conegliano, established in Venice from before 1492 to 1516.  He may have studied under Alvise Vivarini, but was mainly influenced by Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini.  His style changed little during his career and he not only repeated entire compositions but actually re-used the same cartoons for several works; he also ran a large studio, so that many works attributable to him are not to any great extent autograph.  His earliest dated painting is a sacra conversazione for Vicenza, 1489 (now Vicenza, Museo Civica).

– Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton, Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (2000)