Ambrogio Bergognone

Ambrogio Borgognone(variously known asAmbrogio da Fossano,Ambrogio di Stefano da Fossano,Ambrogio Stefani da Fossanoor asil BergognoneorAmbrogio Egognic. 1470s– 1523/1524) was an Italian painter of theRenaissanceperiod active in and nearMilan.

While he was nearly contemporary withLeonardo da Vinci, he painted in a style more akin to the pre-Renaissance, Lombard art ofVincenzo FoppaandBernardino Zenale. The dates of his birth and death are unknown; he is said to have been born atFossanoinPiedmontand his appellation is attributed to his artistic affiliation with theBurgundian school.

His fame is principally associated with his work at theCertosa di Paviacomplex, composed of the church and convent of theCarthusians. It is unlikely he designed, in 1473, the celebrated façade of the Certosa itself. He worked there for eight years starting in 1486, in collaboration with his brotherBernardino Bergognone, when he furnished the designs of the figures of the virgin, saints and apostles for the choir stalls, executed in tarsia or inlaid woodwork byBartolomeo Pola, till 1494, when he returned toMilan. Only one known picture, an altarpiece at theBasilica of Sant' Eustorgio, can with good probability be assigned to a period of his career earlier than 1486.

For two years after his return to Milan, he worked at the church ofSan Satiro. From 1497 he was engaged for some time in decorating with paintings the church of theIncoronatain neighbouringLodi. Documentation of him thenceforth is scant. In 1508 he painted for a church inBergamo; in 1512, his signature appears in a public document of Milan; in 1524 – and this is our last authentic record – he painted a series of frescoes illustrating the life ofSt. Sisiniusin the portico ofSan Simplicianoat Milan. Borgognone is considered a modestly talented painter with marked individuality. He holds an interesting place in the most interesting period of Italian art.

TheNational Gallery, London, has a number or his works: the separate fragments of a silk banner painted for the Certosa, and containing the heads of two kneeling groups severally of men and women, and a large altarpiece of the marriage ofSt Catherine, painted for the chapel ofRebecchinonearPavia.

But to judge of his real powers and peculiar ideals, his system of faint and clear colouring, whether in fresco, tempera or oil; his somewhat slender and pallid types, not without something that reminds us of northern art in their Teutonic sentimentality as well as their fidelity of portraiture; the conflict of his instinctive love of placidity and calm with a somewhat forced and borrowed energy in figures where energy is demanded, his conservatism in the matter of storied and minutely diversified backgrounds to judge of these qualities of the master as they are, it is necessary to study first the great series of his frescoes and altarpieces at the Certosa, and next those remains of later frescoes and altarpieces at Milan and Lodi, in which we find the influence of Leonardo and of the new time mingling with, but not expelling, his first predilections.[3]Bernardino Luiniis said to have been one of his pupils.

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Bergognone