Bembo, Bonifacio e Gianfrancesco

BEMBO, BONIFACIO e GIANFRANCESCO. - BONIFACIO, a 15th-century painter of Brescian origin, a notable portraitist, worked especially in Cremona, in Milan and in the Castle of Pavia, where he painted large genre scenes together with Vincenzo Foppa (1447-48). The only works remaining to us are the central part of a Coronation of the Virgin (museum of Cremona), of clearly Gothic derivation, and the two figures of Francesco Sforza and of Bianca Maria Visconti (1462, S. Agostino in Cremona), traditionalist despite the attempt to approach Renaissance forms.

GIANFRANCESCO, nephew of the preceding, also a painter, settled in Cremona, perhaps in 1526. According to the Vasarian tradition he would have set his hand to some decorations in the house of Cardinal Francesco Soderini in Rome, where he would have gone with Boccaccino. The influence of the Roman milieu, especially of the Vatican Rooms, and that of Giorgione is evident in the eclectic decoration of the cathedral of Cremona, already begun by Boccaccino (the Adoration dates from 1515 of the Magi, signed, and the Presentation in the Temple date from 1515) and in the altarpiece of S. Pietro in Cremona (1524).

Fabia Borroni