FRANCESCO DEL COSSA. — Painter, born in Ferrara in 1436, died there in 1478.
Having settled in Bologna in 1470, he restored in 1472 and completed with a landscape background and figures the *Madonna del Baraccano*; in 1474 he painted the *Foro dei Mercanti* panel; and at an unknown date the stained-glass windows of the church of S. Giovanni in Monte. Death prevented him from finishing the decoration of the Garganelli chapel, in which he had painted only the vault, and which was continued by Ercole de’ Roberti.
DEL COSSA, FRANCESCO — *Annunciation* — Amsterdam, Lanz Collection.
Del Cossa was a pupil of Cosmè Tura, whose forms he always maintained fidelity to, but he also came under the influence of Domenico Veneziano, Andrea del Castagno, and Baldovinetti. The *S. Girolamo* in the Pinacoteca of Ferrara, if it is his work and not Ercole de’ Roberti’s, as Berenson maintains, also shows reflections of Mantegna’s art in the statuesque forms of the figure. Thus, if it is by his hand, the *Allegory of Autumn* in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin clearly reveals 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 Cossa distinguished himself by his ability to render movement, which we see animating the predella with the *Miracles of S. Vincenzo Ferreri* in the Vatican Pinacoteca. This predella was part of the triptych painted for the Grifoni chapel in S. Petronio in Bologna, of which the central panel was the *S. Vincenzo Ferreri* now in the National Gallery in London, and the two side panels the panels with SS. Peter and John the Baptist now in the Brera Gallery in Milan. Del Cossa’s last work is the *Madonna in Throne with S. Petronio, S. John the Evangelist and a Commissioner*, signed and dated 1474, executed for the Foro dei Mercanti in Bologna at the expense of Domenico degli Amorini and Alberto de’ Cattanei, depicted in the act of venerating the Virgin, and now preserved in the Pinacoteca of that city. In this painting, which is one of the masterpieces of Emilian painting of the Quattrocento, the artist still reveals the teachings of Piero della Francesca in the strong relief of the monumental figures of the two saints.
F. Del Cossa is one of the most powerful individualities of the Ferrarese school; he knew how to combine the fiery line of late Gothic with the stately statuary of Mantegna and the hieratic monumentality of Piero della Francesca.