Workshop of Francesco Di Bernardo De' Vecchi, called Rizzo Da Santacroce (documented 1504 – 1545), Madonna with Child and the Infant Saint John

Workshop of Francesco Di Bernardo De' Vecchi, called Rizzo Da Santacroce (recorded 1504 – 1545)

Madonna with Child and Saint John

Tempera on panel, 39 x 33 cm

The strong stylistic and compositional similarities, with works such as the Madonna and Child from the Civic Museum of Sarnico, allow us to connect the panel to a painter working in one of the most famous and profitable workshops of 16th-century Veneto: that of the Santacroce family from Val Brembana.

Critics divide the painters of Santacroce, who number about ten, into two distinct but collaborative workshops, both active at the same time in Venice, their adopted city, in Istria, Dalmatia and in the hinterland of Bergamo and Brescia between the early years of the 1508th century and the first quarter of the 1504th century. The first workshop is that of Francesco di Simone (died in 1545), a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, who was succeeded by Francesco Rizzo di Bernardo, also from Santacroce but not a relative, active between 1531 and 1565, with whom his brother Vincenzo, who died in 1503, collaborated. The activity of the first workshop ends with the figure of Giovanni de Vecchi or de Galizzi, documented in Venice until 1556. The definition of the second workshop reveals a clearer genealogy since it passes from father to son and grandson; It actually started with Girolamo, active between 1516 and 1584, who was succeeded by his son Francesco di Girolamo (Venice, 1575 -1620) and his nephew Pietro Paolo, active between XNUMX and XNUMX.

This is a work executed for the devotional market by the workshop of Francesco di Bernardo de' Vecchi, known as Rizzo da Santacroce. The painting is certainly a revival of an iconography in use among the painters of the Santacroce circle: the San Giovannino finds a precise comparison with the same subject present in other works such as the Madonna and Child between the Saints Giovannino and Caterina d'Alessandria of the Church of San Giacomo Apostolo dei Domenicani and in the Madonna and Child of the Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa. Even the prototype of the Madonna whose figure is emphasized by a rectangular drape behind her is found in other works attributed to him kept at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and in the Pinacoteca in Forlì.

There are few documents on the artist as well as chronological references to his life and production. The first news about Francesco dates back to 1505 when he was present at the reading of a will, such a faculty was obtained only upon reaching the age of majority. As already reported, he became a disciple and apprentice of Francesco di Simone and heir to the workshop while still very young, he was about twenty-three years old. In 1516 he signed a contract with the rector of the church of Santa Maria in Serina for the execution of a triptych, depicting the Pietà between Saints Peter and John the Baptist, which still exists, although dismembered, and which he delivered in 1518. Between 1515 and 1524 he created two polyptychs for the church of S. Giovanni Batista in Dossena: that of the Madonna del Rosario and that of the high altar, commissioned by the confraternity of Corpus Domini. These works testify to his strong connection to his places of origin, as he also married Adriana, originally from Bergamo, in 1516. However, his activity took place mainly in Venice, as demonstrated by his enrollment in the painters' brotherhood in 1530 and his two most famous works: The Last Supper in the Bragadin chapel in S. Francesco della Vigna and the Apparition of the Risen Christ (1513), now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.

The founder of the Santacroce painters' workshop in Venice was Francesco di Simone who, in his will of 1508, left the workshop with the drawings and other materials to his pupil Francesco Rizzo di Bernardo, also from Santa Croce (a hamlet of San Pellegrino) in Val Brembana, but belonging to another family. Their workshop was the holder of an artisanal way of carrying out the profession and frequently relied on the reworking of ideas by Giovanni Bellini, patriarch of Venetian painting of the time, but also by other undisputed masters such as Mantegna and Antonello da Messina, captured in drawings held in high regard and transmitted by will for the continuation of the activity. Many of his Sacred Conversations, which present countless variations on the theme, can be traced back to drawings taken from the originals by Giovanni Bellini in Venice.

The object is in good condition