_Ercole di Giulio Grandi_ (Ferrarese: died 1531).
Of this painter, one of the best of the Ferrarese school,
very little is known, beyond the fact that he was in the
service of the ducal house at Este. The identification of his
works is also very uncertain, for Vasari, unaware that two
painters of the Grandi family had borne the name of Ercole
(see 1127), classed the works of both under the same head. The
present picture is not signed, and was first identified as
the younger Ercole's by Morelli. This Ercole, son of Giulio
Cesare de' Grandi, studied under Francia and Lorenzo Costa,
to the latter of whom, indeed, this picture was attributed in
the foundling hospital of Ferrara, from which it comes. Like
Francia, Ercole combined the practice of other arts with that
of painting--being a gold-beater and modeller, as well as a
painter--a conjunction which is seen in this picture, with its
wealth of decorative accessories. He disputes with Garofalo the
title of "the Raphael of Ferrara," a description which this
splendid picture goes some way to justify.
A picture notable alike for its central idea and for its wealth of
decorative detail. In the group of the infant Saviour (a very finely
drawn figure) standing on the Virgin's knees in the act of benediction,
with St. William on the right of the throne and on the left St. John
the Baptist, is an imaginative representation of Christianity--the
soldier of Christ, with his armour on him, but bareheaded, and with his
hand on the sword, on one side; the saint, with the Cross and the Book,
on the other. The accessories are full of decorative inventiveness,
but every detail is full of thought; they are an epitome, as it were,
of all the decorative arts of the time. Note first, in the walnut
wood pedestal of the throne, that the frieze at the top is a graceful
arrangement of dolphins, emblems of love and affection, and the base,
of stags and swans ("As pants the hart for cooling streams, so pants
my soul for thee, O God"). In its central panel is an alto-relievo in
ivory, with Adam and Eve on either side of the Tree of Knowledge. On
each of the receding panels is a white marble medallion of the turbaned
head of a prophet. On the _predella_ below there are, (1) beginning
on the spectator's right, the Nativity, (2) the Presentation in the
Temple, (3) the Massacre of the Innocents, (4) the Flight into Egypt,
and (5) Christ disputing with the Doctors. The ornamental details of
the marble _baldacchino_ (or canopy), like those of the throne, are all
symbolic; thus the archivolt is composed of choiring cherubim separated
by pots of lilies, and the spandrils of the arch are occupied by
medallions of the angel Gabriel and the Virgin (G. T. Robinson in _Art
Journal_, May 1886, p. 150).