ORTOLANO, GIOVANNI BATTISTA BENVENUTI, known as l’Ortolano. — Painter, born in Ferrara to Francesco di Benvenuto around 1485 (in 1512 he was already over 25 years old) and not before 1525. In his essentially Padane training, various elements converged, which almost never found perfect fusion, although modern criticism has recently been able to recognize in a certain group of works by O. attributions of vigorous expressive individuality.
Initially under the influence of Boccaccino (see the naive Nativity from the Davis bequest in the Metropolitan Museum of New York), then of Roberti and Lorenzo Costa (lunette of the Pietà, with a unified sky background, bluish-green, in the Pinacoteca of Ferrara, and the Nativity altarpiece, in the Doria Gallery in Rome, where the Glory of Angels above is a reminiscence of Raphael’s St Cecilia), the Ferrarese master later approached Mazzolino for the exuberance of greens and reds (Christ and the Adulteress in the collection of Viscount Lee of Fareham in Richmond, Surrey). In his mature period, however, he alternates typological affinities with Garofalo and Dosso Dossi, which partly explains the attributions to these two masters of several works now considered certain by O. His art, between the aesthetic purism of Garofalo and the romantic fervor of Dosso, introduces into the Ferrarese school of the 16th century a lively accent of rustic gravity and artisanal affability, albeit within modules of yearned-for classicism. He distinguishes himself from other contemporary painters of the Po Valley for the solidity of his modeled forms, intensely illuminated, for the raw outlining of contours, and for the abundance of enamelled coloration (R. Longhi defined him as: “a classicist by intention, but a naturalist in grain and temperament; one might almost call him the Moretto of Ferrarese painting”).
Among his most characteristic and elevated works are to be cited: the Nativity in the Louvre, with its most devout idyllic recollection; the calm, intimate Circumcision
