Gaudenzio Ferrari

Gaudenzio Ferrari ( – 11 January 1546) was an Italian painter and sculptor of the Renaissance.

Biography

Early life and education Gaudenzio was born to Franchino Ferrari at Valduggia in Valsesia in the Duchy of Milan. Valduggia is now in the province of Vercelli in Piedmont. He is said to have first learned the art of painting at Vercelli from Gerolamo Giovenone. He probably received his training at Varallo at the beginning of the 1490s, a lively period in the town’s artistic life, when extensive works were being carried out at the Sacro Monte. His master was Giovanni Stefano Scotti, none of whose works has as yet been identified but who, judging from the early work of his pupil, may have been influenced by Lombard artists, most notably Bernardino Luini.

Gaudenzio’s early works, such as a painting on panel of the Crucifixion (Varallo, Museo Civico Pietro Calderini), were influenced by the poetic art of Bramantino and by the northern Italian classicizing style of the Milanese painter Bernardo Zenale. His early, but self-assured, Angel of the Annunciation (; Vercelli, Museo Civico Borgogna), painted for the convent of the Grazie, Vercelli, suggests that these sources were soon enriched by his response to the tender Renaissance style of Pietro Perugino (active at the Certosa di Pavia, 1496–9).

Gaudenzio is also recorded at Vercelli in the first known documentary reference to him, the contract for a polyptych commissioned by the Confraternity of St. Anna in 1508, with Eusebio Ferrari acting as guarantor. There remain four paintings of scenes from the Life of St. Anne and God the Father (Turin, Galleria Sabauda) and two of the Annunciation (London, National Gallery). In these works Gaudenzio’s style is more controlled, possibly as a result of a journey to Central Italy in . In 1513 Gaudenzio painted a cycle of frescoes showing scenes from the Passion on the dividing wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Varallo. Giovanni Martino Spanzotti had painted a similar cycle in Santa Bernardino, Ivrea, a century earlier. The frescoes are rich in strikingly realistic detail and convey emotion with passionate intensity; here Gaudenzio created new forms to express human emotions and attitudes.

Gaudenzio's initial pictorial style may be considered as derived mainly from the old Milanese school, He executed his most memorable work, a fresco of the Crucifixion (pictured right), with a multitude of figures, no less than twenty-six of them being modelled in actual relief, and coloured. Andrea Solari, Giovan Battista della Cerva, Gian Paolo Lomazzo, and Fermo Stella were his principle students.

Selected works

Sant'Anna Altarpiece (Galleria Sabauda and National Gallery, London) Pietà, in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin St Catharine Miraculously Saved from the Torture of the Wheel, Brera Gallery, Milan Frescoes in church of Santa Maria della Pace, Milan Virgin with Angels and Saints under an Orange Tree, Vercelli Cathedral Last Supper, Refectory of San Paolo Birth of the Virgin, Annunciation, Visitation, Adoration of the Shepherds and Kings, Crucifixion, Assumption of the Virgin (1532–1535), Church of San Cristoforo St. Paul Meditating, Louvre, Paris Presentation in the Temple, Christ among the Doctors, History of Christ (1507), Convent of the Minorites, Varallo Adoration (after 1527), Santa Maria di Loreto, near Varallo Glory of Angels (1535), Dome of the Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Saronno Scourging of Christ, Ecce Homo and Crucifixion (1542), Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan Saint Andrew, London, National Gallery Christ rising from the Tomb, London, National Gallery Lamentation of Christ, , Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest St. Cecile with the Donator and St. Marguerite, Pushkin Museum, Moscow Beheading of a saint, , Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht