BONIFACIO DE' PITATI detto BONIFACIO VERONESE e BOTTEGA

(Verona, 1487 - Venice, 1553) Amaltea che nutre Giove Oil on panel, 30X44 cm In analogy to the famous decoration of the Bogherini bridal chamber carried out in Florence between 1515 and 1520 by Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, Francesco Granacci and Bacchiacca, the panel presented here was similarly conceived as a decorative element. It was Giorgione who inaugurated this decorative tradition in Venice (Ridolfi, 1648), documenting how the artist was able to circumvent the beaten path, to give more play and freedom to painting, to make new proposals even in the ornamental field, creating works that, according to Chastel, cannot be declared unworthy of the master (A. Chastel. Giorgione, Milan 2012, p. 17). The same critical attention to this peculiar production by Ridolfi is reserved to De' Pitati, who comments: 'With such forms Bonifacio made his way to immortality, who after having given proof of great virtue with the numerous things he did, changed the beauty of earthly colours with the splendours of Heaven'. Vittorio Sgarbi himself publishing his research on the painter recognizes the analogy of not a few of his tablets with those described by Ridolfi: We have also seen paintings by this hand of bed enclosures, chests and similar things used in those times for the delights of the houses, where sacred and profane histories were depicted, the Muses with their insignia, the Planets, Venus with Cupids, Satyrs, countries and kindnesses were made, from which they were taken into consideration, being held in great esteem, there being no better use of money than in the paintings of excellent men'. We must therefore highlight Bonifacio's primary role in the panorama of Venetian Mannerism, especially his early reading of Parmigianino's texts, demonstrating a surprising intellectual independence, if we think of the tenacious hegemony of Titian Vecellio. Consequently, we can affirm that even Veronese and Tintoretto measured themselves against his revision of Titian's models, of those devised by Palma and Pordenone, without neglecting the later results of Schiavone and Sustris. Sgarbi also indicates that these cycles composed decorations that were difficult to imagine and reconstruct philologically but certainly created a spectacular effect, demonstrating how at the beginning of the 1940s Bonifacio was by now a successful artist, intent on intercepting the taste of cultured collectors, offering unprecedented representations of literary sources that were for the most part extraneous to large format painting. The work is accompanied by an expert opinion by Ferdinando Arisi. Reference bibliography: V. Sgarbi, Giovanni de Mio, Bonifacio de' Pitati, Lambert Sustris: Indicazioni sul primo manierismo nel Veneto, in Arte Veneta, 1981, XXXV, pp. 52 ; 61 S. Simonetti, Profilo di Bonifacio de' Pitati, in: Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte, 15, 1986, no. 44, pp. 111 ; 112; 263 ; 265