Garofalo - the Ferrara Raphael

On 13 March 2007 an exhibition opened in the Twelve Column Hall of the New Hermitage dedicated to Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo (1476?-1559). The exhibition presents around 20 items from the collection of the State Hermitage.

Garofalo's teachers were Domenico Panetti and Boccaccio Boccacino, whose works are also shown in the exhibition. Raphael's paintings in the Vatican exerted a decisive influence on the artist. He became familiar with them during his visit to Rome in the years 1510-1512. Thereafter the influence of the great master was always felt in the work of Benvenuto.

Emperor Nicholas I purchased four paintings by the artist for the Hermitage. Three of them can be seen in the exhibition: The Marriage at Cana, The Allegory of Old and New Testaments and The Bearing of the Cross. The fourth painting, The Mracle of Bread and Fish, was transferred in 1931 to the Far Eastern Art Museum of Khabarovsk. The canvas of the Allegory of Old and New Testaments was especially restored for the exhibition and visitors will see it for the first time.

Alongside monumental canvases by Garofalo, the exhibition also shows his smaller paintings, including The Entombment, a work which entered Russia during the reign of Peter the Great and was then considered to be a Raphael.

The beginnings of Ferrara art can be appreciated from the work of an unknown 15th century master, The Generosity of Alexander the Great. The exhibition includes works by Francesco Francia,, Dosso Dossi and his younger brother Battista, as well as Lorenzo Costa. An arrival from Parma, Gian Francesco Meineri, whose works are also shown in the exhibition, is considered as belonging to the Ferrara school.

The career of Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo developed during the first half of the 16th century, the period of the flowering and then waning of the Italian Renaissance. The master followed a path from rather conservative early works to the time of maturity, onwards to the achievement of great freedom, in which he was helped greatly by getting to know the painting of Santi. Partly for this reason it was precisely thanks to Garofalo, the local Raphael, that the Ferrara school entered upon the path of the High Renaissance.

The curator of the exhibition and author of the illustrated scholarly catalogue issued by the State Hermitage Publishing House is Tatyana Kustodieva, leading researcher of the Department of Western European Fine Arts and doctor of art history.

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Tatyana Kustodieva, Curator of the exhibition

At the opening of the exhibition

At the exhibition

The exhibition catalogue