DE ROBERTI, ERCOLE. - Painter, born in Ferrara in 1456 (or c. 1450), died in 1496. Since in documents he sometimes appears with his mother’s surname, which is thought to belong to the Grandi family, he has been confused with Ercole Grandi, son of Giulio Cesare, an artist whose personality is most uncertain and evanescent.
Thus Vasari in his *Vita di Ercole da Ferrara* conflates the two artists. De Roberti is considered a pupil of COSA, but he must also have been trained by TURA and was influenced by the Bellini, Mantegna, and 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 COSA. In 1481 he had finished the altarpiece for S. Maria in Porto Fuori in Ravenna. In 1487 he took TURA’s place as court painter in Ferrara.
De Roberti adhered only in general terms to the Ferrarese manner, in comparison with which he appears more balanced and measured. As a youth he must have been in Venice and followed the current that led to GIOVANNI BELLINI, from whom he derived his intense coloring, his modeling by light, and his atmospheric perspective. Reminiscences of Jacopo Bellini can also be discerned in his works, as in the *Raccolta della Manna* in the National Gallery, London, which recalls the backgrounds of certain drawings by the Venetian master.
The same characteristics are found in the altarpiece of S. Maria in Porto Fuori in Ravenna, which also shows affinities with the *arca* by COSMO TURA formerly in S. Giovanni in Ferrara and later in Berlin. The antithesis between De Roberti and COSA is clear in the *Crucifixion* in Berenson’s collection, which shows analogies with a drawing by Jacopo Bellini in the Louvre, and the figures are subtly modeled by light in the manner of Antonello, not vigorously highlighted as in the Vatican predella painted by COSA. The *St John the Baptist* in the Berlin museum, once attributed to Mantegna, is also akin to the Venetian school and the Bellini; yet it displays a firm and precise drawing, set against a blood-red sky in an austere, bare landscape, the ascetic figure of the Saint dominating the broad horizon.
De Roberti’s masterpiece is considered the predella of the altarpiece in the church of S. Giovanni in Monte in Bologna, later executed by COSTA in 1497 for its grand and dignified expression and the intensity of its effects; this work is now in the Dresden gallery and is divided into two parts representing on one side the *Agony in the Garden* and the *Capture of Christ*, and on the other the *Way to Calvary*. Between the two was the *Pietà* in the Bolognese church, now in the Liverpool gallery.