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| Giovanni Mauro della Rovere Flying Angel before 1640 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Giovanni Mauro della Rovere Draped Prophet before 1640 drawing British Museum |
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| Giovanni Mauro della Rovere King kneeling before three Franciscan Monks before 1640 drawing British Museum |
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| Giovanni Mauro della Rovere Deacon led to Martyrdom before 1640 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Giovanni Mauro della Rovere Virgin and Child with St Dominic distributing Chaplets to the Faithful before 1640 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Giovanni Mauro della Rovere The Last Supper ca. 1626 drawing British Museum |
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| Giovanni Mauro della Rovere The Last Supper 1626 detached fresco (from demolished monastery) Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica, Milan |
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| Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere Pope Alexander IV charters the Augustinian Order ca. 1610 fresco Chiesa di San Marco, Milan |
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| Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Mauro della Rover Pope Alexander IV charters the Augustinian Order (detail) ca. 1610 fresco Chiesa di San Marco, Milan |
The brothers Giovanni Mauro della Rovere (ca. 1575-ca. 1640) and Giovanni Battista della Rovere (ca. 1561-ca. 1630) worked both independently and collaboratively as fresco painters in Milan, where they were known collectively as I Fiammenghini. Directly above are two views of the ruin of a fresco they painted together in Milan's Church of San Marco around 1610. The 13th-century Pope Alexander IV was represented on his throne under a colonnade issuing the charter to create the Augustinian Order. An oversized unclothed mendicant at the bottom of the composition, far from the main action, served as a pretext for the brothers to paint a heroic Mannerist figure in tribute to Michelangelo. But half of this fresco was intentionally destroyed in the 1950s to uncover a partially-preserved 14th-century Crucifixion scene, over the top of which I Fiammenghini had been assigned to create their work. The resulting mishmash inflicts a kind of postmodern irony on both paintings. Yet at the time when this damage was done, there was still near-universal agreement that the art of the early Renaissance (represented by the concealed Crucifixion) was of incomparably greater importance than anything produced by Late Mannerism.
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| Giovanni Battista della Rovere Design for Altar Wall of a Chapel 1607 drawing British Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista della Rovere Doubting Thomas 1593 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Giovanni Battista della Rovere Study for Angels in Pendentives before 1630 drawing Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Giovanni Battista della Rovere St Mark with a Doctor of the Church in Lunette 1599 drawing Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista della Rovere The Last Judgment before 1630 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Giovanni Battista della Rovere Massacre of the Innocents ca. 1590 drawing- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |