DE ROBERTI, ERCOLE. - Painter, b. in Ferrara in 1456 (or c. 1450), d. in 1496. Since in documents he sometimes appears with his mother's surname, which is supposed to belong to the Grandi family, he has been confused with Ercole Grandi di Giulio Cesare, an artist whose personality is very uncertain and evanescent.
Thus Vasari in his Vita di Ercole da Ferrara makes one artist of the two. D. R. is considered a pupil of Cossa, but he must also have had Tura as a master and was influenced by the Bellini, by Mantegna and by Antonello da Messina. Between 1480 and 1486 he was in Bologna, where he completed the decoration (now destroyed) of the Garganelli chapel in S. Pietro, left unfinished by Cossa. In 1481 he had finished the altarpiece for S. Maria in Porto Fuori in Ravenna. In 1487 he took Tura's place as painter to the court of Ferrara.
D. R. adhered only in general to the Ferrarese manner, in comparison with which he appears more balanced and measured. As a young man, he must have been in Venice and followed there the current that led to Giovanni Bellini, from whom he drew the intense colouring, the modelling with light, and atmospheric perspective. Reminiscences of Jacopo Bellini are also discernible in his works, as in the Gathering of the Manna in the National Gallery in London, which recalls the backgrounds of certain drawings by the Venetian master.
The altarpiece of S. Maria in Porto Fuori in Ravenna has similar characteristics, though it also shows affinities with the anchor of Cosmé Tura formerly in S. Giovanni in Ferrara and later in Berlin. The antithesis between D. R. and Cossa appears clearly in the Crucifixion of the Berenson collection, in which analogies are found with the drawing by Jacopo Bellini preserved in the Louvre and the figures are brought out without harshness by the light in the manner of Antonello, and not vigorously set off like those of the Vatican predella painted by Cossa. Also akin to the Venetian school and to the Bellini is the St. John the Baptist of the Berlin museum, once attributed to Mantegna, which however shows a firm and precise drawing; against a blood-red sky, in an austere and bare landscape rises the ascetic figure of the Saint, dominating the broad horizon.
Considered a masterpiece of D. R. is the predella of the altarpiece in the church of S. Giovanni in Monte in Bologna, executed later by Costa in 1497, for its grandiose and dignified expression and for the intensity of its effects; this work is now in the gallery of Dresden and is divided into two parts representing the one the Prayer in the Garden and the Betrayal of Christ, the other the Ascent to Calvary. Between the two was the Pietà in the Bolognese church, now in the gallery of Liverpool.
Bibliography7 works
Vincenzo Golzio