Bonifacio Bembo

Tempera on panel, 40 x 31 cm. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

Bonifacio Bembo, also known as Bonfazio Bembo, or simply just Bembo, was a northern Italian Renaissance artist born in Brescia in 1420. He was the son of Giovanni Bembo, an active painter during his time. As a painter, Bonifacio mainly worked in Cremona. He was patronized by the Sforza family and was commissioned to paint portraits of Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca Maria Visconti. In the past century, art historians have begun to question the authenticity of his works, believing his only two secure works to be the portraits of Francesco and Bianca Maria Sforza.

Works Bonifacio was active between 1447 and 1478. Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian attributed to Bonifacio Bembo from an altarpiece displayed in the Church of Sant’Agostino in Cremona. Circa 1454–1458 His earliest attributed work is the Cavalcabò chapel in the same Sant'Agostino. Giovanni Cavalcabo paid for the decoration of the chapel in 1447, and it took approximately five years to complete. Strangely, there is no connection between Bembo and the chapel; however, following the publication of Wittgen in 1936, the chapel has been attributed to him. While painting the decorations of the chapel, Bembo showed fine style, demonstrating the influence of Michelino da Besozzo and the Zavattari brothers. Today, the cards can be found in two different places as the set has been broken up throughout the years. The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, acquired 35 of the cards in 1911, and they have remained there ever since. At the Morgan Library, the cards are kept in transparent envelopes so they may be examined without handling them. They are also held in a fourteenth-century French casket-box decorated in relief with chivalric scenes. Thirteen cards are owned by the Colleoni family who inherited them from the Donati family, and are deposited in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. Finally, the Accademia Carrara owns the other 26 cards, which were bequeathed in 1900 to the institution by Francesco Baglioni, a friend of Count Colleoni, who had traded them with Colleoni.