FERRAÙ FENZONI (attr. A)

(Faenza, 1562 - 1645) San Gerolamo Oil on copper, 36X29,5 cm Fenzoni was born in Faenza and little is known about his education. The first works of which we have news date back to the end of 1580, when in Rome he painted his most important commission for the small chapel of St. Francis in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, but as Giovanni Baglione punctually reminds us, he was called to paint important decorative cycles in the Vatican Library, at the Holy Stairs but also in Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano. In 1593 the painter was in Todi where he completed the fresco of the Last Judgement, reminiscent of Michelangelesco's, to return in 1599 to his home town. Fenzoni's distinctive style is characterised by a sprezzatura drawing of colours accentuated and modelled by light, expressing all those fertile 'contrarieties' of late Roman Mannerism. The copper in question can therefore be classified as precious evidence of the artist's 'small' production and can probably be attributed to his stay in Rome or to the beginning of his Umbrian years, reminding us of the Evangelists in fresco in the apartment of St. Pius V at the Vatican (cf. Scavizzi-Schwed, pp. 100 ; 104, nos. P14 and P15) and in the expression the frescoes in the Palazzo Vescovile in Todi in 1594 (cf. Scavizzi-Schwed, pp. 113 ; 125, nos. P19 ; P21). Bibliography of reference: G. Scavizzi, N. Schwed, Ferraù Fenzoni, Todi 2006, ad vocem