Amico Aspertini

Amico Aspertini (c. 1474 – 1552) is an Italian Renaissance painter whose complex, eccentric, and eclectic style anticipates Mannerism. He is considered among the first of the Bolognese School of painting.

Biography

He was born in Bologna to a family of painters (Guido Aspertini and Giovanni Antonio Aspertini, his father), and studied under masters such as Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia. He is briefly documented in Rome between 1500-1503, returning to Bologna and painting in a style influenced by Pinturicchio. In Bologna in 1504, he joined Francia and Costa in painting frescoes for the newly restored "Oratory of Santa Cecilia" in San Giacomo Maggiore, a work commissioned by Giovanni II Bentivoglio.

In 1507-09, he painted a fresco cycle in San Frediano in Lucca. Asperini painted in 1508-1509 the splendid frescoes in the Chapel of the Cross in the Basilica di San Frediano in Lucca. Aspertini was also one of two artists chosen to decorate a triumphal arch for the entry into Bologna of Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V in 1529.

He died in Bologna.

Giorgio Vasari describes Aspertini as having an eccentric personality, who, half-insane, worked so rapidly with both hands that chiaroscuro was split, chiaro in one hand, scuro in the other. He quotes Aspertini as complaining that all other Bolognese colleagues were copying Raphael. Aspertini also painted façade decorations (all lost), and altarpieces, many of which are often eccentric and charged in expression. For example, his Bolognese "Pieta" appears to occur in an other-worldy electric sky.

Anthology of works

*"Adoration of the Shepherds" - Staatliche Museen, Berlin
*"Adoration of the Shepherds" (1515) - Uffizi, Florence [http://www.wga.hu/html/a/aspertin/adoratio.html]
*Domus Aurea
*Frescoes, Oratorio di Santa Cecilia, Bologna
*San Frediano, Lucca
*San Michele, Bosco
*"Pieta with Saint Mark, Ambrose, John the Evangelist, and Anthony Abbot" (1519) - San Petronio, Bologna) [http://www.italicon.it/museo/I031-003.htm]
*"Saint Sebastian" [http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=45817+0+none]
*"Battle of the Amazons" (Italy)
*San Giacomo Maggiore
*Profile of Hero (1496) - Christian Museum, Esztergom [http://www.wga.hu/html/a/aspertin/heroic.html]
*"Madonna Enthroned with Saints", (c. 1515) - San Martino, Bologna)
*"Holy Family with Saints" (after 1530) - Saint Nicolas aus Champs, Paris

References

*cite book | author= Francis P. Smyth and John P. O'Neill (Editors in Chief| year=1986| title= The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the 16th and 17th Centuries| chapter= | editor= National Gallery of Art, Washington DC| others= | pages= 56-61| publisher= | id= | url= | authorlink=
*cite book | first= Sydney J.| last= Freedberg| year=1993| title= Painting in Italy, 1500-1600| chapter= | editor= Pelican History of Art| others= | pages=404-409| Penguin Books Ltd| publisher= | id= | url= | authorlink=

External links

* [http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/a/aspertin/ Web Gallery]
* [http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a403-1.html Getty Museum Information]