BOLTRAFFIO, GIOVANNI ANTONIO. - Painter, b. in Milano in 1467, d. there in 1516. He worked almost always in his native city; only in 1500 do we find him in Bologna, where he enjoyed the protection of the Casio family, for whom he executed numerous portraits, and around 1515 in Roma, where he is credited with a fresco in the cloister of S. Onofrio al Gianicolo.
Much more than by the Lombard tradition of Foppa and Zenale, recognizable moreover in his preference for the rectangular scheme of composition (Madonna in the National Gallery in London), he was influenced by Leonardo, whose faithful disciple he became; although he was unable to assimilate the achievements of the master's art, he imitated his types and gestures (Madonna col Bambino in the National Museum of Budapest, Madonna col Bambino in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum in Milano) and his landscape backgrounds (Due devoti in the Brera Gallery, the «Ancona di Lodi», now in the National Museum of Budapest); in seeking to reproduce Leonardo's «sfumato» and softness, however, he immersed the forms of his smooth and somewhat swollen figures in a dark chiaroscuro. He favoured half-length compositions; but in a second period he sought a certain monumentality of design, visible above all in the Madonna Casio, executed in 1500 for the Church of the Misericordia in Bologna (now in the Louvre), which, already from Vasari onward, has been considered his masterpiece.