Sunday, September 1, 2019

Bernardino Gatti, called Il Sojaro (ca. 1495-1576)

Bernardino Gatti
Ascension of Christ
1553
vault fresco
Chiesa di San Sigismondo, Cremona

Bernardino Gatti
Apostle witnessing the Ascension of Christ
(study for fresco in San Sigismondo, Cremona)
ca. 1553
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Bernardino Gatti
Flying Angel
(study for fresco in San Sigismondo, Cremona)
ca. 1553
drawing
British Museum

Bernardino Gatti
Ascension of Christ
1553
vault fresco
Chiesa di San Sigismondo, Cremona

"A painter who was still more durable than Giulio Campi, Bernardino Gatti (Il Sojaro) more specifically illustrates the role of the Emilian style in Cremona.  Sojaro was only uncertainly of Cremonese birth, but it is known that he began his career as an independent artist there.  In the course of the 1520s, however, he must have been in Parma, intensively studying the production of Correggio.  . . .  His interpretation of Correggio's style was unfortunately graceless and pedestrian, and it was subject to the ponderousness and literalness that the Lombard disposition shows when it is least inspired.  Sojaro's most accomplished work, the large fresco of Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes (Cremona, S. Pietro, 1552) recalls Correggesque style only in its outward guise, which is a mask for its essential Lombard stuff of realist detail and illustration.  There is as yet no accent in Sojaro of Maniera, but his next work shows the compromise that he felt forced to make with the primacy that had been established all around him of Mannerist style: his fresco in the centre field of the nave vault of S. Sigismondo, the Ascension of Christ (1553), reworks Correggio's forms into a grossly heavy Romanism based in part on Pordenone but more on Mantua.  A pretentious rhetoric dictates the posturing of figures but does not move them.  From 1560 to 1572 Sojaro was mainly employed in Parma and there demonstrated, in his dome of the church of the Steccata (1560-66) how his acquired Romanist emphases could make even direct plagiarism from Correggio quite dull."

– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Bernardino Gatti
Assumption of the Virgin
1560-66
fresco
Basilica di Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma

Bernardino Gatti
Assumption of the Virgin
(pendentive detail with St John the Evangelist)
1560-66
fresco
Basilica di Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma

Bernardino Gatti
Assumption of the Virgin
(pendentive detail with Angel of the Annunciation)
1560-66
fresco
Basilica di Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma

Bernardino Gatti
Assumption of the Virgin
(pendentive detail with Virgin Annunciate)
1560-66
fresco
Basilica di Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma

Bernardino Gatti
Assumption of the Virgin
(pendentive detail with King David and St Matthew)
1560-66
fresco
Basilica di Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma

Bernardino Gatti
Assumption of the Virgin
(dome detail)
1560-66
fresco
Basilica di Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma

Bernardino Gatti
Apostle witnessing the Assumption of the Virgin
(study for fresco in Santa Maria della Steccata, Parma)
ca. 1560-66
drawing
British Museum

Bernardino Gatti
Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist
ca. 1552
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Bernardino Gatti
Standing Youth in Armour
(study for painting in Cremona)
ca. 1543-47
drawing
British Museum

Bernardino Gatti
Christ carrying the Cross
before 1570
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Bernardino Gatti
Crucifixion with St Agatha, Mary Magdalen, St Bernardo degli Uberti
1566-68
oil on canvas
Cattedrale di Parma