DE ROBERTI, ERCOLE. — Painter, born in Ferrara in 1456 (or about 1450), died in 1496. Since in documents he sometimes appears with his mother’s surname, which is presumed to have belonged to the Grandi family, he was confused with Ercole Grandi di Giulio Cesare, an artist whose personality is highly uncertain and elusive.
Thus Vasari, in his Vita di Ercole da Ferrara, makes a single artist out of the two. D. R. is considered a pupil of Cossa, but he must also have had Tura as his teacher 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 Cossa. In 1481 he had completed the altarpiece for S. Maria in Porto Fuori at Ravenna. In 1487 he took Tura’s place as painter at the court of Ferrara.
D. R. adhered only in general to the Ferrarese manner, in comparison with which he appears more balanced and restrained. As a young man, he must have been in Venice and followed the current that culminated in Giovanni Bellini, from whom he derived his intense coloring, his modeling through light, and his atmospheric perspective. Reminiscences of Jacopo Bellini can also be discerned 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 at Ravenna has similar characteristics, although it also shows affinities with the stillness of Cosmé Tura, formerly in S. Giovanni at Ferrara and later in Berlin. The antithesis between D. R. and Cossa appears clearly in the Crucifixion in the Berenson collection, in which analogies with Jacopo Bellini’s drawing preserved at the Louvre can be found; the figures are brought out by the light without harshness, in the manner of Antonello, rather than being vigorously relief-modeled like those in the Vatican predella painted by Cossa. The S. Giovanni Battista in the Berlin museum, once attributed to Mantegna, is likewise akin to the Venetian school and the Bellini; it nevertheless displays a firm and precise design. Against a blood-red sky, in an austere and barren landscape, the ascetic figure of the Saint rises, dominating the broad horizon.
D. R.’s masterpiece is considered to be the predella of the altarpiece in the church of S. Giovanni in Monte at Bologna, subsequently 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, one representing the Prayer in the Garden and the Flagellation of Christ, the other the Ascent to Calvary. Between the two, in the Bolognese church, was the Pietà, now in the gallery at Liverpool.