A striking, although mediocre, Family of the Virgin (No. 1284) by Lorenzo de’ Fasoli, who is also known as Lorenzo di Pavia, and who died about 1520, illustrates the tradition that St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, was three times married, Joachim being her third husband; the other two were Cleophas and Salome. This composition of seventeen figures is signed
LAURENTIVS PAPIEN FECIT MDXIII,
and is one of the latest examples of this tradition, which about 1520 passed out of art.
A large Triptych (No. 1384), signed
JOH̄NES MAZONVS
DE ALEXĀ PINXIT,
is by Giovanni Massone, who worked at Alessandria in the second half of the fifteenth century; it contains the portraits of Pope Sixtus iv. with St. Francis of Assisi and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere under the protection of St. Anthony of Padua. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was Bishop of Savona about 1483; he was in 1503 elected Pope under the title of Julius ii., and became the patron of Raphael.
The remaining pictures of this school are of little account. Bernardino Campi (1522–1592?) is represented by a Mater Dolorosa (No. 1202); and Bartolommeo Manfredi (1580?–1617) by a Fortune Teller (No. 1368), a subject which demonstrates the Decadence in full operation. Giovanni Paolo Panini (1695–1764), who came to Paris in 1732 and became an Academician, seems to have got some satisfaction out of committing to canvas a Concert given at Rome on Dec. 26, 1729, in Honour of the Birth of the Dauphin, the son of Louis XV. (No. 1409) and a large Interior of St. Peter’s at Rome (No. 1408), the latter being signed and dated 1730.
THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA-BOLOGNA
THE city of Bologna was visited in 1268 by Oderigi of Gubbio (fl. 1268–1295), who had the benefit of personal intercourse with Giotto in Rome. Bologna produced a skilled miniature painter in Franco Bolognese in the fourteenth century, but gave birth to few native painters of merit. Until Francesco Cossa removed from Ferrara to Bologna in 1470, art in the City of the Colonnades was in an undeveloped state. The school of Bologna, which may be considered as an offshoot of the Ferrarese school, was further strengthened by the arrival of Lorenzo Costa.