Francia Bigio, Francesco di Cristofano, called Il

FRANCIA BIGIO, Francesco di Cristofano, Called Il. - Painter, b. perhaps in Florence, to a Milanese father, ca. 1482; d. there in 1552. A pupil of Mariotto Albertinelli and of Piero di Cosimo, he shared a workshop and studies with Andrea del Sarto. Together with Bugiardini and others, he belongs to that circle of Florentine artists working in imitation of the great masters: Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, seeking a harmony among those differing modes of figurative vision.

F.'s personality is far inferior to that of Andrea del Sarto, with whom he reveals an undoubted affinity; and his painting often fails to achieve synthesis, but remains on the level of an eclecticism rich in intentions never resolved into art. Such is the case with the disorganized Annunciation in Turin (Pinacoteca), the monochrome frescoes of the cloister of the Scalzo, in Florence, etc. At times he better understood the influence of the greatest masters: as in the Spocalizio della Vergine in the cloister of the Annunziata (1531), a fresco that reveals the impression of A. del Sarto on F.; in the very Raphaelesque Madonna del pozzo (Florence, Uffizi), in the Madonna with Jesus and the Young St. John, in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna, more Michelangelesque in its plasticism, but very Raphaelesque in composition. F.'s color is fresh and luminous, and he proves himself a notable portraitist (Portrait of a Man [1517] in Vienna, Liechtenstein Gallery; two portraits formerly in the Berlin Gallery, etc.).

Luigi Grassi