Italian architect, painter, sculptor and writer. He was educated in
Mantua, was recorded as active ‘for many years in Rome and
elsewhere’ and became known only when he was over thirty, due to his
design for the triumphal decorations set up in Mantua in January
1549 in honour of Philip (later Philip II of Spain), son of Emperor
Charles V. The success of these decorations won for him the esteem
of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, and he obtained the prestigious
appointment of supervisor of the Cathedral Works and in May 1549 the
title of Prefetto delle Fabbriche Ducali, a post that had remained
vacant for almost three years following the deaths, in rapid
succession, of Giulio Romano and Battista da Covo. The decree of
appointment praises him as a ‘supreme architect, excellent painter,
refined sculptor’, yet the only evidence of his youthful activity as
a painter consists of an order (1531) to pay him for a fresco
(destr. 1899) made to Giulio Romano’s design on the façade of the
Palazzina of Margherita Paleologa at Mantua; the early date of this
order has given rise to discussion of Bertani’s date of birth, which
has been deduced from the Mantuan register of deaths.
Engraving by Giorgio Ghisi after Bertani
The vision of Ezekiel
Giorgio Ghisi after Giovanni Battista Bertani
Hercules, engraving by Ghisi after Bertani, 1558
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