ROSSO Fiorentino

(1494-1540)

Giovanni Battista di Jacopo de Guaspare, known as Rosso Fiorentino, was among the most innovative artists working in Italy and France in the first half of the sixteenth century. The Florentine painter's earliest training remains a mystery, but by 1513 he was working alongside Pontormo* and Andrea del Sarto* at Santissima Annunziata. His Assumption ofthe Virgin there was not well received, and Rosso spent several years working in other Tuscan cities. From this period dates the Deposition from the Cross in Volterra, today the artist's most famous work. Its inventiveness led early-twentieth-century critics to treat Rosso as a paradigmatically anticlassical artist, one of the so-called Mannerists who reacted against the classical, normative art of Raphael* and Michelangelo.*

Rosso returned to Florence in 1522 and in 1524 moved to Rome. His works there, such as the Dead Christ, now in Boston, show the Mannerist "stylish style" that is a development of Raphaelesque ideas of grace and elegant beauty, rather than a reaction against them. He also designed a series of prints (engraved by Caraglio) that led to the diffusion of this style.

Following the sack of Rome in 1527, Rosso traveled under the protection of Leonardo Tornabuoni to Umbria and painted several altarpieces. In Venice Pie-tro Aretino* helped bring Rosso to the attention of King Francois I,* and from 1530 until his death Rosso worked in France, especially at Fontainebleau. He lived a princely life and was responsible for paintings as well as designs for decorative arts. He is the main artistic personality behind the early stages of the so-called Fontainebleau school.

Bibliography

E. Carroll, Rosso Fiorentino: Drawings, Prints, and Decorative Arts, 1987. D. Franklin, Rosso in Italy, 1994.

John Marciari