GALASSO

GALASSO. - Under the name of G. di Matteo Piva, the figure of a 15th-century Ferrarese painter has emerged in recent decades, taking the place of the highly uncertain G. Galassi cited by early biographers. Presumed pupil of Piero della Francesca and in contact, in Ferrara, around 1450, with the Fleming Rogier van der Weyden, Piva,

after having worked with other Este colorists in the villas of Belriguardo, Migliaro, and Belfiore, is said to have moved to Bologna, where he executed important works in the churches of S. Domenico, S. Giovanni in Monte, and Mezzaratta. His death, according to the chronicler Lamo, occurred there in 1488.

A group of three paintings has been attributed to him by A. Venturi, unquestionably by the same hand and which

more than any other work of the Ferran school attest to the beneficial influence of Piero on those masters: these works are two gentle Muse suonatrici, in the Budapest Museum, and the very well-known Allegoria dell'autunno, in the Berlin Museum, which for the firmness of its compositional layout, for the spontaneous vital energy that animates the protagonist, for the admirable synthesis of the landscape, and for the freshness of the flesh, blue, olive-green, and purple tones, is among the most memorable georgic representations of the Renaissance, and not only in Italy.

| Alberto Nepoi