GIOVANNI PEDRINI, called GIAMPIETRINO. — Painter, active in the first half of the 16th century. The only dated work, if one accepts the controversial attribution, would be the altarpiece (1521) from Pavia, formerly in S. Marino, now in the Duomo.
In the series of Madonnas with Child grouped under his name (in addition to the Madonna Borghese and the one close to it in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, one may recall the Madonna of the Lily at Highnam Court and another at Villa Albani; the Madonna in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and those in the Murray collection in London and in the Castello Sforzesco Museum), as well as in the Adorations of the Child at S. Sepolcro in Milan and in the Cook collection in Richmond, a derivation from models or drawings by Leonardo is discerned, rendered with an insistent search for grace. His manner is more conventional in the figures of Magdalens (cf. the one in Brera), as in those mythological and allegorical works attributed to female figures in private collections (Venus, collection in Vienna; Nymph Egeria, Brivio collection, Milan; Leda, Neuwied Castle; Cleopatra and Lucrezia, Simonetti collection, Rome; etc.), derived, with greater or lesser adherence, from Leonardo’s models. Among his best works is the altarpiece in the parish church of Ospedaletti Lodigiano.