Benvenuto Tisi (Italian:[beɱveˈnuːtoˈtiːzi]; 1481 – September 6, 1559), also known as Il Garofalo (Italian:[ilɡaˈrɔːfalo]), was a Late-
Renaissance-
ManneristItalian painter of the
School of Ferrara. Garofalo's career began attached to the court of the Duke d'Este. His early works have been described as "idyllic", but they often conform to the elaborate conceits favored by the artistically refined Ferrarese court. His nickname, Garofalo, may derive from his habit of signing some works with a picture of a carnation (in Italian, garofano, with a few dated variants).
Biography
Early training
Born in
Canaro near
Ferrara, Tisi is claimed to have apprenticed under
Panetti and perhaps
Costa and was a contemporary, and sometimes collaborator with
Dosso Dossi. In 1495 he worked at
Cremona under his maternal uncle
Niccolò Soriano,[1] and at the school of
Boccaccino, who initiated him into
Venetian colouring. He may have spent three years (1509–1512), in Rome. This led to a stylized classical style, more influenced by
Giulio Romano.
Invited by a Ferrarese gentleman,
Geronimo Sagrato, to Rome, he worked briefly under
Raphael in the decoration of the
Stanza della Segnatura. From Rome family affairs recalled him to Ferrara; there
Duke Alfonso I commissioned him to execute paintings, along with the Dossi, in the
Delizia di Belriguardo and in other palaces. Thus the style of Tisi partakes of the Lombard, the Roman and the Venetian modes.[1]
He painted extensively in Ferrara, both in oil and in fresco, two of his principal works being the "Massacre of the Innocents" (1519), in the church of S. Francesco, and his masterpiece "Betrayal of Christ" (1524). For the former he made clay models for study and a clay figure. He continued constantly at work until in 1550 blindness overtook him, painting on all feast-days in monasteries for the love of God. He had married at the age forty-eight, and died at Ferrara on the 6th (or 16th) of September 1559, leaving two children.[1]
Even his least successful works retain, amid their frigid and porcelain quality, a harmony which marks Venetian colouring. His youthful works include the "Boar Hunt" in the Palazzo Sciarra. Later, the "Knight's Procession" in the
Palazzo Colonna in
Rome — gave promise of an Italianate
Cuyp, less commonplace, more
romantic, and more refined than the
Dutch artist.[2]
His youthful works include the Boar Hunt in the Palazzo Sciarra and the Virgin in the Clouds with Four Saints (1518) in the
Gallerie dell'Accademia in
Venice, considered one of his masterpieces. The Pietà (1527) in the
Brera Gallery in Milan reveals an increasingly stylized treatment. The Madonna (1532) in the
Modena Gallery is a charming picture; however, the large Triumph of Religion in the Atheneum at
Ferrara has been described as a "bookish" affair, whose episodes are difficult to elucidate. Garofalo is one of the painters known and described by
Vasari. From 1550 till his death Garofalo was blind.[2]
Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). Pelican History of Art (ed.). Painting in Italy, 1500–1600. Penguin Books.
Francis P. Smyth; John P. O'Neill, eds. (1986). The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the 16th and 17th Centuries. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. pp. 141–43.
Dosso Dossi, Garofalo, and the Costabili Polyptych: Imaging Spiritual Authority, The Art Bulletin, June, 2000 by Giancarlo Fiorenza pp. 252–279