ACCORDING to tradition the most famous artist in the school of Ferrara before Tura was Ettore de’ Bonacossi, of whom little is known.

At Ferrara, the city of the Este family, as at all the Italian courts, the art of painting was liberally patronised. All Ferrarese art was more or less Paduan both in origin and style, Cosimo Tura (1430?–1495), the founder of this school, having worked at Padua as a pupil of Squarcione.

The seriousness of Cosimo Tura’s realism was unyielding to those intellectual qualities that dominated the art of Florence in his day; but, in spite of a certain harshness of effect, the vigour of his design and the dignity of his conception give permanent value to the work of this master. Tura is represented in the Louvre by two pictures; the figures seen in his large lunette of the PietÀ (No. 1556) are admirably designed to fill up the space they occupy. This panel is a dismembered part of an altarpiece which was painted for the Roverella family, and was formerly in its entirety in the Church of S. Giorgio fuori le Mura at Ferrara. The PietÀ eventually passed to the Campana collection, and so to the Louvre. The drapery in this panel, which is cracked horizontally, is tinny, and the flesh is metallic with its white and purple lights, while the bones in the faces being over-prominent create an unpleasant effect. The centre panel of the original altarpiece represents the Madonna and Child Enthroned. It passed in time into the Frizzoni collection at Bergamo, and was subsequently purchased in 1867 from Sir Charles Eastlake for the National Gallery (No. 772). The sinister wing of the original altarpiece depicts the Bishop Lorenzo Roverella presented to the Virgin by St. Maurelius and St. Paul, and is now in the private rooms of the Colonna Palace in Rome.

The Church of S. Giorgio fuori le Mura at Ferrara also at one time contained another altarpiece painted by Cosimo Tura. It was placed over the altar of St. Maurelius, but has long ago been dismembered. One of its panels is the Flight into Egypt, in the collection of Mr. R. H. Benson; two others, representing a Scene from the Life of St. Maurelius and The Martyrdom of St. Maurelius, are in the Ferrara Gallery; another is the Adoration of the Magi, in the possession of the Contessa di Santa Fiora, in Rome; while a fifth, the Circumcision, belongs to the Marchesa Passeri, in Rome.

The Louvre possesses an arched panel of A Monk (No. 1557) by Tura. The panel is split and the cheek of the saint injured.

The seriousness of purpose which inspired Cosimo Tura was absorbed by his pupil Francesco Cossa (1435–1477), whose art is not seen at the Louvre. One of Cossa’s pupils was Lorenzo Costa, who in 1483 passed from Ferrara to Bologna, to which city he carried the principles of Tura’s training. Francesco Bianchi (1460–1510) was another of Tura’s pupils, but he belongs more strictly to the school of Modena. Another pupil in the studio of the chef d’ecole of Ferrarese painting was Ercole Roberti (1430?–1496), who also worked at Padua. This painter, whose full name was Ercole de’ Roberti Grandi, has been justly claimed as the author of the two small panels representing St. Apollonia (No. 1677a), holding in her hand the pincers, the symbol of her martyrdom, and St. Michael (No. 1677b). These companion pictures are officially described under the ambiguous designation of “Ferrarese School, xvi century.” They, however, clearly belong to the earlier century, and are probably by Roberti.

The Louvre contains nothing by Ercole Roberti’s pupil, Ercole di Giulio Cesare Grandi (1465?–1531). Ercole Grandi’s influence is sometimes seen in the exceedingly rare pictures of Giovanni Battista Benvenuto, who is better known under the name of Ortolano (“the gardener”), and takes his name from the occupation of his father. The art of Ortolano (1460–1529) is seen to the greatest advantage in the St. Sebastian, St. Roch, and St. Demetrius, in the National Gallery (No. 669). An immature work by him is apparently the Nativity in this Gallery (No. 1401), which in the opinion of the compilers of the Catalogue is by Domenico Panetti (1450?–1512?), a pupil of Lorenzo Costa. Panetti’s works are rarely met with out of Italy.

Among the pictures of this school, those of Lodovico Mazzolino (1478?–1528) are perhaps the easiest to recognise. His Holy Family (No. 1387) is not now exhibited, but the Christ preaching to the Multitude on the Sea of Galilee (No. 1388) is evidently by him, although it has been ranked by one critic as a Flemish picture painted under the inspiration of Mazzolino and Dosso Dossi.

Panetti was the master of Benvenuto Tisi, a very prolific painter who is better known by the name of Garofalo (1481?–1559), owing to his occasionally painting a gillyflower into his pictures as a signature. although the Catalogue includes four small works by this artist, a Circumcision (No. 1550), a Holy Family (No. 1552), a Madonna and Child (No. 1554), and a Sleeping Child Jesus (No. 1553), only the last of them is now exhibited.

Another artist in this school who signed his pictures with a rebus was Giovanni Lutero (1479?–1542), who is better known under the name of Dosso Dossi. A typical instance of this punning use of his name is the Money Changers driven out of the Temple, in the Doria Gallery at Rome; it is signed with a “D” traversed by a bone (osso), obviously a play on his name of Dosso or D OSSO. No picture by Dosso Dossi is now exhibited.

Francesco Bonsignori (1455–1519), Marco Zoppo (fl. 1471–1498), Michele Coltellini (1480–1542), Ippolito Scarsellino (1551–1620), Girolamo da Carpi, and other Ferrarese painters are unrepresented in this collection.