02/12/2024
The publication of a panel with a Eucharistic Christ between Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, located in the 18th century in the church of Sant’Ambrogio in Brugherio, near Milan, makes it possible to identify a painter of German culture active in the region in the 1450s, who is also the author of the fresco of the Mocking of Christ in the Oratory of Saint Bernard in the Cistercian Abbey at Chiaravalle Milanese. His identity has been the subject of the most disparate hypotheses, including Hieronymus Bosch or, more reasonably, Hans Witz, a Savoyard painter active in Milan in 1478 (and thus much later than the period believed to pertain to this fresco). Careful analysis of the Brugherio altarpiece, a painting of surprising quality later donated to the Diocesan Museum in Bressanone, reveals precise references to Northern European iconography and a Flemish style that must have exerted strong influence on the Lombard painters of those years. A series of connections are also made with Giusto di Ravensburg’s Annunciation, dated 1451, in the cloister of Santa Maria di Castello in Genoa. By Federico Cavalieri. Link bio.
Image: Jos Amman von Ravensburg, Christ of Sorrows between St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, St. Thomas Didymus, St. John the Evangelist, God Father, dove of the Holy Spirit, St. Peter, St. Paul, Diocesan Museum (from Brugherio, St. Ambrose), Brixen.
Cfa is an on-line platform providing information in order to promote inter-cultural dialogues between contemporary and the art of the past centuries.
