Zavattari, Family

ZAVATTARI, FAMILY. - Milanese painters. The documents attest to the activity, in Milan, of a CRISTOFORO, of a FRANCESCO, father of AMBROGIO and GREGORIO, and of a FRANCESCO II, collaborator of Gregorio.

For the building of that Cathedral, Cristoforo worked in 1404 and Francesco in the two years 1416-17. Ambrogio in the years 1456 and 1459. Subsequently the Zavattari brothers executed frescoes, now vanished, in S. Vincenzo in Prato in Milan (1465), and in 1474 Gregorio frescoed the sanctuary of Corbetta. The most substantial source for knowledge of their style is the vast fresco decoration of the walls in the chapel of Teodolinda, in the cathedral of Monza (1444), where the remnants of the late Gothic are paired with the accents of a fresh Renaissance naturalism. Against compact gold grounds rise fourteenth-century architectural structures. Although certain foreshortenings of horses recall the art of Pisanello, the prevailing human types denote a derivation from Michelino da Besozzo. The varied episodes of the narrative recounted offered the painters, who are supposed to be Cristoforo and Francesco Zavattari, the occasion to celebrate the elegance of fifteenth-century costume in scenes of processions, hunts, banquets and funerals. Notable is the influence of the Zavattari on contemporary Lombard miniature painting, as is shown principally by the tarot cards in the Milanese collection of Duke U. Visconti di Modrone, painted for Filippo Maria Visconti between 1428 and 1447, in memory of his marriage to Maria of Savoy.

Alberto Neppi