Francesco Rizzo di Bernardo da Santacroce, (active from 1504 to 1545), Madonna with Child and Saints

Francesco Rizzo by Bernardo da Santacroce

(active from 1504 to 1545)

Madonna with child Saint Simon and Saint Catherine

Oil on panel, 44 x 61 cm

With frame, 65 x 79 cm

Santa Croce is a small village that rises opposite San Pellegrino Terme, on the hilly slopes beyond Brembo. This village was kept alive by some family groups such as the Galizzi (also called Rizzo or De Vecchi), the Oprandi, the Grazioli, the Micheli who then flowed to other centers, such as Bergamo and Venice, thus emptying the small village of Santa Croce. From here come about ten painters active from the beginning of the 16th century until the first quarter of the 17th, belonging to two distinct families who formed two workshops both operating in Venice. 

One of these is the one started by Francesco di Simone who, who died in 1508, left the inheritance to Francesco Rizzo di Bernardo, active from 1504 to 1545 aided by his brother Vincenzo. He is succeeded by his perhaps cousin Giovanni De Vecchi or Galizzi, documented in Venice until 1565.

The genealogy of the second workshop is more defined: it passes from the father, Girolamo active from 1503 to 1556, to his son Francesco active between 1516 and 1584, and finally to his nephew Pietro Paolo di Francesco who died in 1620. Both workshops were active in Venice and its surroundings, expanding into the Brescia and Bergamo areas, touching Istria and Dalmatia, often working in collaboration with each other. Their works are characterized by compositional styles inspired by great masters such as Giambellino, Cima da Conegliano, Tiziano, Cariani and Previtali and tend to be repeated across generations, often making it difficult to distinguish the various personalities that animate the workshops. 

The Madonna with child and Saints Simeon and Catherine proposed here refers to undoubted Bellini influences. The figures are shot half-length and crowd the space of the panel which opens onto a landscape background, only interrupted by a central panel against which the figure of the Virgin stands out.

The affectedness of the line is similar to that of the known works of Francesco Rizzo di Bernardo da Santacroce, especially if we compare it with the Madonna and Child between Saints Simon and Joseph in the Pinacoteca of Ravenna. The two works are identical in the compositional scheme and in the hieratic arrangement of the characters whose bulkiness of the bodies is hidden, if not flattened, by the clothes that cover them in favor of an almost graphic simplification of the same. The comparisons between the figures of Saint Simon and the Virgin, who repeat the same poses, are particularly fitting, just as the similarities in the rendering of the drapery and their curling are compelling. 

Francesco Rizzo, son of Bernardo, who carried out a modest business, belonged to the De Vecchi family. The first information about him dates back to 1505 in a document that cites him as a witness, which indicates that on that date he must have already reached the age of 18. In 1508 he inherited the workshop of his master Francesco di Simone. In 1518 he delivered a triptych to the Church of S. Maria a Serina, now dismembered but still existing. He appears again as a witness in a document from 1545, the date after which he died.

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