Ambrogio Borgognone
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(also known as Ambrogio da
Fossano or Ambrogio Stefani da Fossano or as il Bergognone, c. 1470s
– 1523/1524) was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Milanese
school.
While he was nearly contemporary with Leonardo da Vinci, he painted
in a style more akin to the pre-Renaissance, Lombard art of Vincenzo
Foppa and Bernardino Zenale. The dates of his birth and death are
unknown; he is said to have been born at Fossano in Piedmont and his
appellation attributed to his artistic affiliation with the
Burgundian school.
His fame is principally associated with his work at the Certosa
di Pavia complex, composed of the church and convent of the
Carthusians. It is unlikely he designed, in 1473, the celebrated
facade of the Certosa itself. He worked there for eight years
starting in 1486, when he furnished the designs of the figures of
the virgin, saints and apostles for the choir-stalls, executed in
tarsia or inlaid wood work by Bartolomeo Pola, till 1494, when he
returned to Milan. Only one known picture, an altar-piece at the
Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio, can with probability be assigned to a
period of his career earlier than 1486.
For two years after his return to Milan he worked at the church
of San Satiro. From 1497 he was engaged for some time in decorating
with paintings the church of the Incoronata in the neighboring Lodi.
Documentation of him thenceforth is scant. In 1508 he painted for a
church in Bergamo; in 1512, his signature appears in a public
document of Milan; in 1524 - and this is our last authentic record -
he painted a series of frescoes illustrating the life of St.
Sisinius in the portico of San Simpliciano at Milan. Borgognone
considered a modestly talented painter with marked individuality. He
holds an interesting place in the most interesting period of Italian
art.
The National Gallery, London, has a number or his works: the
separate fragments of a silk banner painted for the Certosa, and
containing the heads of two kneeling groups severally of men and
women; and a large altar-piece of the marriage of St Catherine,
painted for the chapel of Rebecchino near Pavia.
But to judge of his real powers and peculiar ideals, his system
of faint and clear coloring, whether in fresco, tempera or oil; his
somewhat slender and pallid types, not without something that
reminds us of northern art in their Teutonic sentimentality as well
as their fidelity of portraiture; the conflict of his instinctive
love of placidity and calm with a somewhat forced and borrowed
energy in figures where energy is demanded, his conservatism in the
matter of storied and minutely diversified backgrounds to judge of
these qualities of the master as they are, it is necessary to study
first the great series of his frescoes and altar-pieces at the
Certosa, and next those remains of later frescoes and altarpieces at
Milan and Lodi, in which we find the influence of Leonardo and of
the new time mingling with, but not expelling, his first
predilections.
Bernardino Luini is said to have been one of his pupils.
