DEL COSSA, FRANCESCO. - Painter, b. in Ferrara in 1436, d. there in 1478.
Having settled in Bologna in 1470, he restored there in 1472 and completed with a landscape background and with figures the Madonna del Baraccano; in 1474 he painted the picture for the Foro dei mercanti; and on an unknown date the stained-glass windows of the church of S. Giovanni in Monte. Death prevented him from completing the decoration of the Garganelli chapel, in which he had painted only the vault, and which was continued by Ercole de' Roberti. Del C. was a pupil of Cosmé Tura, to whose forms he always remained faithful, but he also came under the influence of Domenico Veneziano, of Andrea del Castagno and of Baldovinetti. The St. Jerome of the picture gallery of Ferrara, if it is his work and not that of Ercole de Roberti, as Berenson maintains, also shows reflections of Mantegna's art in the statuary forms of the figure. Thus, if it came from his hand, the Allegory of Autumn in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin reveals very clear derivations from Piero della Francesca in the power of the construction and in the monumental forms of the figure firmly planted on the ground. From his master Tura Del C. distinguished himself by the capacity to render movement, which we see animating the predella with the Miracles of St. Vincent Ferrer, in the Vatican picture gallery. This predella was part of the triptych painted for the Grifoni chapel in S. Petronio in Bologna, of which the central part consisted of the St. Vincent Ferrer now in the National Gallery of London and the two side compartments of the panels with Sts. Peter and John the Baptist now in the Brera gallery in Milan. The last work of Del C. is the Madonna in Throne with St. Petronius, St. John the Evangelist and a patron, signed and dated 1474, executed for the Foro dei mercanti, in Bologna, at the expense of Domenico Degli Amorini and of Alberto de' Cattanei, depicted in the act of venerating the Virgin, and now preserved in the picture gallery of that city. In this painting, which is one of the masterpieces of Emilian painting of the Quattrocento, the artist still reveals the Pierfrancescan teachings in the strong relief of the monumental figures of the two saints.
F. Del C. is one of the most powerful individualities of the Ferrarese school; he knew how to reconcile with the tortured line of the late Gothic the statuary solemnity of Mantegna, and the hieratic monumentality of Piero della Francesca.