According to tradition the most famous artist in the school of Ferrara
before Tura was Ettore de’ Bonacossi, of whom little is known.
At Ferrara, the city of the Este family, as at all the Italian courts,
the art of painting was liberally patronised. All Ferrarese art was
more or less Paduan both in origin and style, Cosimo Tura (1430?-1495),
the founder of this school, having worked at Padua as a pupil of
Squarcione.
The seriousness of Cosimo Tura’s realism was unyielding to those
intellectual qualities that dominated the art of Florence in his
day; but, in spite of a certain harshness of effect, the vigour of
his design and the dignity of his conception give permanent value to
the work of this master. Tura is represented in the Louvre by two
pictures; the figures seen in his large lunette of the _Pietà_ (No.
1556) are admirably designed to fill up the space they occupy. This
panel is a dismembered part of an altarpiece which was painted for
the Roverella family, and was formerly in its entirety in the Church
of S. Giorgio fuori le Mura at Ferrara. The _Pietà_ eventually passed
to the Campana collection, and so to the Louvre. The drapery in this
panel, which is cracked horizontally, is tinny, and the flesh is
metallic with its white and purple lights, while the bones in the
faces being over-prominent create an unpleasant effect. The centre
panel of the original altarpiece represents the _Madonna and Child
Enthroned_. It passed in time into the Frizzoni collection at Bergamo,
and was subsequently purchased in 1867 from Sir Charles Eastlake for
the National Gallery (No. 772). The sinister wing of the original
altarpiece depicts the _Bishop Lorenzo Roverella presented to the
Virgin by St. Maurelius and St. Paul_, and is now in the private rooms
of the Colonna Palace in Rome.
The Church of S. Giorgio fuori le Mura at Ferrara also at one time
contained another altarpiece painted by Cosimo Tura. It was placed
over the altar of St. Maurelius, but has long ago been dismembered.
One of its panels is the _Flight into Egypt_, in the collection of
Mr. R. H. Benson; two others, representing a _Scene from the Life
of St. Maurelius_ and _The Martyrdom of St. Maurelius_, are in the
Ferrara Gallery; another is the _Adoration of the Magi_, in the
possession of the Contessa di Santa Fiora, in Rome; while a fifth, the
_Circumcision_, belongs to the Marchesa Passeri, in Rome.
The Louvre possesses an arched panel of _A Monk_ (No. 1557) by Tura.
The panel is split and the cheek of the saint injured.
The seriousness of purpose which inspired Cosimo Tura was absorbed by
his pupil Francesco Cossa (1435-1477), whose art is not seen at the
Louvre. One of Cossa’s pupils was Lorenzo Costa, who in 1483 passed
from Ferrara to Bologna, to which city he carried the principles of
Tura’s training. Francesco Bianchi (1460-1510) was another of Tura’s
pupils, but he belongs more strictly to the school of Modena. Another
pupil in the studio of the _chef d’ecole_ of Ferrarese painting was
Ercole Roberti (1430?-1496), who also worked at Padua. This painter,
whose full name was Ercole de’ Roberti Grandi, has been justly claimed
as the author of the two small panels representing _St. Apollonia_ (No.
1677A), holding in her hand the pincers, the symbol of her martyrdom,
and _St. Michael_ (No. 1677B). These companion pictures are officially
described under the ambiguous designation of “Ferrarese School, XVI
century.” They, however, clearly belong to the earlier century, and are
probably by Roberti.
The Louvre contains nothing by Ercole Roberti’s pupil, Ercole di Giulio
Cesare Grandi (1465?-1531). Ercole Grandi’s influence is sometimes seen
in the exceedingly rare pictures of Giovanni Battista Benvenuto, who is
better known under the name of Ortolano (“the gardener”), and takes his
name from the occupation of his father. The art of Ortolano (1460-1529)
is seen to the greatest advantage in the _St. Sebastian, St. Roch, and
St. Demetrius_, in the National Gallery (No. 669). An immature work by
him is apparently the _Nativity_ in this Gallery (No. 1401), which in
the opinion of the compilers of the Catalogue is by Domenico Panetti
(1450?-1512?), a pupil of Lorenzo Costa. Panetti’s works are rarely met
with out of Italy.
Among the pictures of this school, those of Lodovico Mazzolino
(1478?-1528) are perhaps the easiest to recognise. His _Holy Family_
(No. 1387) is not now exhibited, but the _Christ preaching to the
Multitude on the Sea of Galilee_ (No. 1388) is evidently by him,
although it has been ranked by one critic as a Flemish picture painted
under the inspiration of Mazzolino and Dosso Dossi.
Panetti was the master of Benvenuto Tisi, a very prolific painter who
is better known by the name of Garofalo (1481?-1559), owing to his
occasionally painting a gillyflower into his pictures as a signature.
Although the Catalogue includes four small works by this artist, a
_Circumcision_ (No. 1550), a _Holy Family_ (No. 1552), a _Madonna and
Child_ (No. 1554), and a _Sleeping Child Jesus_ (No. 1553), only the
last of them is now exhibited.
Another artist in this school who signed his pictures with a _rebus_
was Giovanni Lutero (1479?-1542), who is better known under the name
of Dosso Dossi. A typical instance of this punning use of his name is
the _Money Changers driven out of the Temple_, in the Doria Gallery at
Rome; it is signed with a “D” traversed by a bone (_osso_), obviously
a play on his name of Dosso or D OSSO. No picture by Dosso Dossi is now
exhibited.
Francesco Bonsignori (1455-1519), Marco Zoppo (fl. 1471-1498), Michele
Coltellini (1480-1542), Ippolito Scarsellino (1551-1620), Girolamo
da Carpi, and other Ferrarese painters are unrepresented in this
collection.