Rosso Fiorentino, Giovanni Battista di Jacopo di Gaspare, called Il

ROSSO FIORENTINO, Giovanni Battista di Jacopo di Gaspare, called Il. - Painter, b. in Florence in 1495, d. at Fontainebleau in 1540.

The formation of R., difficult to define, took place within the sphere of the school of Andrea del Sarto, with derivations from Piero di Cosimo, from Dürer and, subsequently, with marginal borrowings from Michelangelo, often arriving at solutions parallel to those of Beccafumi. His earliest surviving documented work is the fresco with the Assumption in the little cloister of the Annunziata in Florence, commissioned from him in 1517, which shows evident borrowings, besides from Fra' Bartolomeo, from Dürer: a sign of the artist's eccentric position with respect to the contemporary and surrounding figurative culture. From 1518 is the Madonna and Four Saints for the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, now at the Uffizi, which almost frightened the patron because of its bizarre interpretation of the sacred theme, while precisely in it the expressionistic foundation of the style and the surprising mental freedom appear particularly appreciable to present-day taste. Also at the Uffizi is preserved the music-making angel reproduced here in color. In 1521 R. signed the Deposition now in the Pinacoteca of Volterra, another capital work of ardent pathetic impetus. Of the same year