Fontana, Prospero

FONTANA, PROSPERO - St. Alexis Distributing His Goods to the Poor. Bologna, church of S. Giacomo Maggiore.

Madonna del Baraccano, St. Peter, St. Joseph, etc.) and kept a school attended by Calvaert, by Tiarini, and by Lodovico and Agostino Carracci, who later supplanted him. He is a superficial and eclectic painter, who combines reminiscences of Raphael, of Correggio and of Parmigianino in works "more of practice than of knowledge" (Malvasia).

LAVINIA, painter, daughter and pupil of the preceding, b. in Bologna in 1552. Protected by Gregory XIII, she executed in her native city various paintings for churches (Madonna del Baraccano, S. Giuseppe, S. Giacomo Maggiore, etc.) and numerous portraits, among which the best known is that of the Gozzadini family. She came to Rome, where she had already sent an altarpiece for S. Sabina, at the beginning of the 17th century, and became the fashionable portrait painter, sought after by the aristocracy. In Rome she also painted in S. Maria della Pace and made an altarpiece for S. Paolo (destroyed in the fire of 1823). D. in 1614.

Mario Zocca