Ercole de’ Roberti

Ercole d’Antonio de’ Roberti was one of the outstanding Ferrarese painters of the fifteenth century. He was born in the mid-1450s, the son of a tailor, Antonio Grande. Ercole was a pupil of Francesco del Cossa, and is recorded in his workshop in Bologna in 1473. According to Vasari, he had a close relationship with his master, behaving like a son to him to the very end of his life. His first important independent commission seems to have been a large altarpiece for the presbytery of San Lazzaro, a church in the suburbs of Ferrara. Dating from the mid-1470s, the altarpiece was a highly innovative work, taking the form of a unified sacra conversazione at a time when the polyptych was still the standard form of altarpiece. The altarpiece, formerly at Berlin, was destroyed in 1945.

After Cossa’s death in 1478, Ercole set up business in Ferrara in 1479 in partnership with his brother Polidoro and others. He painted an altarpiece (now in the Brera) for a church in Porto, near Ravenna, in 1480-81, and then worked again in Bologna for several years. He completed frescoes (now destroyed) in the Garganelli Chapel in San Pietro that had been left unfinished by Cossa at his death. According to Vasari, he returned in disgust to Ferrara after the envious Bolognese artists raided his house and stole his sketches.

He was court painter to the Este from 1486 at an unusually high salary of 240 lire a year. As well as painting portraits, devotional pictures and murals, he designed wedding chests and beds, carriages and decorations for court ceremonials, and provided architectural drawings and models. An elaborate fresco cycle, depicting scenes from the story of Cupid and Psyche, was painted for the Este villa at Belriguardo. In a letter of 19 March 1491 to Ercole I d’Este complaining of arrears of payment, he describes himself as past the middle years of his life. In November 1492 he visited Rome in the retinue of Prince Alfonso d’Este to pay homage to the newly elected Pope Alexander VI. In December 1494 he was dismissed from the court for accompanying the prince on some late night escapade.

He died in May 1496, at the age of only forty according to Vasari, who says his life was shortened by heavy drinking. He was buried in the church of San Domenico at Ferrara. By the eighteenth century, he was completely forgotten and his pictures were misattributed to other artists, particularly Mantegna. He was ‘rediscovered’ at the end of the nineteenth century.


Baltimore. Walters Art Museum.
Head of Mourning Woman. Wood, 52 x 39.
The woman, mouth open in a cry of anguish, is very like one of the mourners in a large fresco of the Crucifixion painted by Ercole during the 1480s in the church (now cathedral) of San Pietro at Bologna. The fresco was destroyed in the early seventeenth century (apart from a small fragment in the Bologna Pinacoteca), but the composition is known through copies. The Baltimore panel, which shows the woman leaning through a marble frame and over a marble sill, is something of a puzzle: it is clearly not a portrait and would be highly unusual as a devotional image. It has been suggested that it might have been painted by Ercole as a modello or sample for the patrons of the fresco. Another possibility is that it is a copy taken from Ercole's fresco (or from an old copy of his fresco). Acquired (with an absurd attribution to Leonardo da Vinci) by Henry Walters in 1902 with the vast Massarenti collection. Published as a work of Ercole in 1965 (by Federico Zeri in Bollettino d'Arte).            

Berlin. Gemäldegalerie.
*Saint John the Baptist. Wood, 54 x 31.
The ascetic saint – an emaciated, elongated figure with thin and fragile limbs and small head – meditates on the cross he is holding. He stands on a rocky ledge overlooking the sea, with a port shrouded in mist in the distance. This idiosyncratic, mystical work is astonishingly powerful in spite of its diminutive size. Unusually for a Ferrarese picture of this period, it was painted mainly in oil rather than tempera. Formerly in the Dondi-Orologio collection at Padua, where it was ascribed to Mantegna. Given to the Berlin Museum by Wilhelm Wolff in 1885. It was attributed to Ercole in 1887 by Adolfo Venturi; but it was catalogued for a time under the name of ‘Stefano da Ferrara’, to whom Ercole’s altarpiece in the Brera was once ascribed. It may date from the late 1470s.
Madonna. Wood, 33 x 25.
The Virgin is seated beneath a classical marble canopy on a marble bench (or exedra). She prays over the Child, who lies naked across her knees. This small, Bellini-esque devotional picture may date from the 1490s. It was one of at least five paintings bought from the Costabili collection of Ferrara by Alexander Barker of London in the late 1850s. Acquired by the Berlin Museum in 1891.

Bologna. Pinacoteca.
Head of Mary Magdalene. Fresco, 28 x 24.
The sole remaining fragment of the great frescoes of the Crucifixion and Dormition of the Virgin that decorated the Garganelli Chapel in San Pietro in Bologna (now the Cathedral). The frescoes were started by Cossa, who executed the ceiling, and finished, after his death in 1478, by Ercole. Vasari says they took twelve years to complete – seven years for the fresco painting and five years for finishing the work a secco. Michelangelo is said to have praised them as ‘half a Rome in quality’. (His words are recorded in Pietro Lamo's guidebook Graticola di Bologna (1560).) The Garganelli Chapel was demolished in 1605 when the church was rebuilt. The fragment comes from the fresco of the Crucifixion, which is described at length by Vasari. Mary Magdalene was shown running, distraught with grief, across the foreground. The whole scene was charged with violent emotion: the Virgin swooning at the foot of the cross and the two thieves writhing in pain as soldiers break their legs.
A few other fragments of the frescoes were salvaged in 1605 by the Marchese Tanari of Bologna. They were given by the Tinari family to the Academy of Fine Arts, but were lost in 1844, when an attempt was made to transfer them to canvas. The compositions of the scenes can be partly reconstructed from copies. A partial copy of the Crucifixion was given to the church of San Pietro in 1915 by the art historian Bernard Berenson. There are partial copies of the Dormition of the Virgin in the Ringling Museum at Sarasota (Florida) and the Louvre. 
Saint Michael. Wood, 19 x 15.
A damaged fragment, showing just the upper half of the figure, who is dressed in Roman armour. The archangel was probably trampling on the devil, which he was spearing with the slender lance held delicately in his right hand. Acquired from the Santini collection, Ferrara, in 1906.

Bologna. Museo di Palazzo Poggi.
Portrait of Giovanni II Bentivoglio. Wood, 64 x 50.
Giovanni II (1443-1508) was the last of the Bentivoglio rulers of Bologna. He succeeded Sante Bentivoglio in 1463 and remained the city's 'first citizen' until 1506, when he was deposed and excommunicated by Pope Julius II. The portrait is very badly abraded. It was discovered ('horribly daubed and burnt') at the University of Bologna in 1934, and was published as a work of Ercole de' Roberti in 1940 by Roberto Longhi. The Palazzo Poggi (33 Via Zamboni) houses Bologna University's scientific collections.   

Chicago. Art Institute.
Virgin and Child. Wood, 52 x 35.
The Child holds cherries, symbolising the Passion. The Virgin wears an unusual headband with pearls and precious stones. First recorded in 1909 in the collection of Adolf von Beckerath of Berlin; bought in 1929 by Charles H. Worchester of Chicago, and given to the Art Institute in 1947. Previously attributed (by Tancred Borenius in 1912) to Giovanni Buonconsiglio, a minor artist of the Vicentine school. The attribution to Ercole was made by Roberto Longhi in 1934. Possibly one of two paintings of the Virgin and Child documented as painted by Ercole in May 1487 and December 1491. Badly abraded.

Dresden. Gemäldegalerie.
*Garden of Gethsemane; Way to Calvary. Wood, 35 x 118.
The Garden of Gethsemane depicts two consecutive episodes from the Passion narrative. On the far left, an angel appears in the sky to comfort Christ, who prays on the Mount of Olives as his disciples slumber. To the right, soldiers rush to arrest Christ, who is betrayed by Judas Iscariot with a kiss. In the Way to Calvary, the grim procession is led by the two thieves, stripped to their loincloths. Christ, dressed in brilliant white and crowned with thorns, is dragged along by a rope around his neck. To the right, the Virgin Mary faints into the arms of her companions. 
These two long paintings were the side panels of a predella from the church of San Giovanni in Monte at Bologna. The central predella scene, the Deposition from the Cross, is in Liverpool. It is uncertain whether a main altarpiece panel was ever planned. When first described in 1560, the predella was situated beneath the high altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin, signed and dated 1501 by Lorenzo Costa, which is still in the church. Vasari states that the predella was painted at the same time as the lost frescoes of the Garganelli Chapel, and it probably dates from the first half of the 1480s. In 1695 the predella was placed in the small sacristy. The Dresden panels were removed from the church in about 1750 by Luigi Crespi, Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore, for Augustus III, Elector of Saxony. Cleaning in 2018-19, carried out at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, removed layers of darkened old varnish and a greyish toning layer applied in an old restoration. The colours now appear much lighter, and the minute rendering of detall can be better appreciated. 

Ferrara. Pinacoteca.
Saint Petronius. Wood, 27 x 13.
This tiny picture may have served as a model for Michelangelo’s youthful marble figure of the saint on the Arca di San Domenico at Bologna. It is one of a series of seven small panels of saints: the others are in the Louvre (SS. Michael and Apollonia), the Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum at Rotterdam (St Anthony Abbot), and the Cini Collection in Venice (SS. George, Jerome and Catherine of Alexandria). They decorated the pilasters of Cossa’s altarpiece of about 1473 for the Griffoni Chapel in San Petronio at Bologna, the central panel of which is now in London. Ercole also appears to have executed the altarpiece's predella – now preserved at the Vatican Pinacoteca. 
‘Madonna of the Roses’. Wood, 45 x 34.
The Madonna sits on a marble bench, between two vases of roses. The background was originally blue sky and the Virgin had a gold halo. From the Vendeghini collection, Ferrara; given to the gallery in 1973.

Ferrara. Palazzo Schifanoia. Salone dei Mesi.
Scenes for the Month of September. Frescoes.
Upper panel: the Triumph of Vulcan in a chariot drawn by monkeys; the Cyclops at work in Vulcan’s forge; and Mars and Ylia, the parents of Romulus and Remus, in their marriage bed. Middle panel: Libra. Lower panel: Duke Borso out hunting and in his palace receiving Venetian ambassadors. These scenes were attributed to the youthful Ercole by Roberto Longhi in 1934. The attribution is repeated in most guidebooks; but it is doubted by a number of recent critics, including Joseph Manca in his 1992 monograph, both on stylistic grounds and on the grounds that Ercole would have been implausibly young at the time (about 1468-70) when the frescoes were painted.

Fort Worth. Kimbell Art Museum.
*Brutus and Portia. Wood, 49 x 34.
The unusual subject may have been suggested by a woodcut in the first printed edition (1473) of Boccaccio's On Famous Women. In order to convince her husband that she was worthy to share in the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, Portia wounded herself with a razor. She is depicted displaying her cut foot to Brutus. (According to Plutarch, Portia wounded herself on the thigh, and it was presumably for reasons of decorum that the painting places the cut on her foot.) After Brutus's defeat and death, Portia committed suicide by swallowing hot coals. The small panel is one of a series of pictures of virtuous women of antiquity, which also included the Wife of Hasdrubal in Washington and the Death of Lucretia at Modena. It has been suggested that they decorated a cassone but they are more likely to have been set into the panelling or wainscoting of a room. They were probably painted for Duchess Eleonora of Aragon, daughter of the King of Naples and wife of Ercole I d’Este, and could have formed part of the decoration of her suite of rooms in the Castello Vecchio at Ferrara (refurbished in the early 1490s). The Brutus and Portia is first recorded only in 1868, when (as 'Vanity Rebuked' by an unknown artist) it was in the collection of John Hope Barton at Stapleton Park in Yorkshire. From 1920 in the Cook collection at Richmond; acquired by the Kimbell Museum in 1986.

Liverpool. Walker Art Gallery.
*Pietà. Wood, 34 x 31.
The Virgin Mary, cloaked in black, grieves over her son's body, which is stretched rigidly across her knees. She is seated on the sarcophagus in front of the rock-cut tomb. Calvary is sketchily depicted in the background. A great crowd of mourners, spectators and mounted soldiers is gathered under the three crosses, while the city of Jerusalem is just visible on the hill to the left. This poignant little painting was the centre panel of a three-part predella of the Passion of Christ from the church of San Giovanni in Monte at Bologna. The two, much longer, side panels are in Dresden. X-ray photographs have revealed that the Liverpool panel had a keyhole on the left, suggesting that it was used as the door of a tabernacle for the Host. It seems to have been sold from the church around the middle of the eighteenth century. It was among the early Italian and Netherlandish works collected by William Roscoe in about 1804-16 and presented in 1819 to the Liverpool Royal Institution. The panel was then ascribed to Antonio Pollaiuolo, and was later given to Mantegna. Cavalcaselle, in 1865, seems to have been the first to attribute it to Ercole and to recognise the association with the Dresden panels.

London. National Gallery.
*The Israelites gathering Manna. Canvas (transferred from panel), 29 x 64.
Probably part of a tabernacle for the Host, which also incorporated the Last Supper, also in the National Gallery, and a panel representing Melchizedek blessing Abraham (now lost but known through a sixteenth-century copy once in the Chigi collection). Joseph Manca (August 1985 Burlington Magazine) argued that the three panels were originally placed as a predella below a picture of the Pietà in the church of San Domenico at Ferrara. This picture is known from a copy in the Palazzo Venezia (formerly Blumenstihl collection), Rome. In 1592 all three small panels belonged to Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of Ferrara. The Israelites gathering Manna was later in the huge collection of Cardinal Fesch at Rome with an ascription to Masaccio (there were once traces of an alleged signature in the bottom left-hand corner). Purchased by the National Gallery in 1886 from the heirs of the Earl of Dudley.
Last Supper. Wood, 30 x 21.
Probably the door of a tabernacle. It was described as such when sold in 1811, and X-ray photographs have revealed that the small panel was originally fitted with a keyhole and hinges. Acquired by the English collector William Young Ottley in 1798 from the Villa Aldobrandini in Rome, and later in the Hamilton Palace collection, near Glasgow. Purchased by the National Gallery in 1882. Up until this time it had always been ascribed to Masaccio. The attribution to Ercole has sometimes been doubted; the panel was only ‘ascribed’ to him in Martin Davis’s 1961 Gallery catalogue, but cleaning in 1986 helped to reveal its high quality. Areas of paint loss in the lower part of the picture (affecting the left-hand figure, the tablecloth and floor) have been covered up by restoration.
Adoration of the Shepherds; The Dead Christ. Wood, 18 x 14.
There are tiny scenes of the Annunciation to the Shepherds in the background of the Adoration, and of St Jerome, the Stigmatization of St Francis and the Deposition in the background of the Dead Christ. The two panels formed a small, folding diptych covered in velvet recorded in an inventory of the possessions of Eleonora of Aragon, Duchess of Ferrara, drawn up at her death in 1493. Faded remains of the red velvet are still attached to the back of the panels. Acquired by Sir Charles Eastlake in about 1858 from the Costabili collection at Ferrara (where they were attributed to Costa).

Los Angeles. J. P. Getty Museum.
Saint Jerome. Wood, 34 x 22.
The emaciated penitent saint contemplates a crucifix he holds in one hand, and grips a stone in his other hand with which to beat his breast. His cardinal’s hat rests on a book in a niche of the vaulted ruins behind him; a tiny lion is foreshortened from the back. This finely drawn small picture was almost certainly a portable devotional panel rather than part of a predella. The back is painted to resemble porphyry. It is probably an early work of the mid-1470s. Previously in the British collections of Lord Ward (1st Earl of Dudley), the Rev. Walter Bromley-Davenport and the businessman and banker Sir Thomas Barlow; bought by the Getty Museum in 1996.

Madrid. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
*The Argonauts Leaving Colchis. Wood, 35 x 27.
The men in armour in the stern are probably the twins Castor and Pollux, and the two principal figures by the main mast are probably the hero Jason and the Colchian sorceress Medea. One of a series of six panels representing episodes from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. The panels originally decorated a matching pair of cassoni (bridal chests), which are recorded, with an attribution to 'Ercole da Ferrara', in the 1638 inventory of the collection of the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani at Rome. It has been suggested that the cassoni might have been made for the marriage in February 1490 of Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga. (Ercole is said to have painted no less than thirteen cassoni for this occasion, as well as designing the nuptial bed, a magnificent chariot and a gilded buccentaur.) Another possibility is that the cassoni were made in Bologna for the marriage in 1486 of Sallustio Guidotti and Griseide Bentivoglio. (Two panels bear traces of what might be the Guidotti family's coat-of-arms.) The five other panels from the two cassoni are dispersed among different museums and collections. The subjects are the Flight of the Argonauts from Colchis (Museo Civico at Padua), Banquet at the Court of KIng Aeëtes (Musée des Arts Décoratifs at Paris), Battle of the Argonauts (a fragment in the Rucellai collection at Florence), Jason seizing the Golden Fleece (private collection) and King Aeëtes and His Courtiers (a small fragment sold at Sotheby's in April 1989). The panels were certainly produced in Ercole de' Roberti's workshop or circle, but the quality of execution varies considerably. Several writers (beginning with Roberto Longhi in Officina Ferrarese (1934)) have seen the hand of the young Lorenzo Costa in some scenes. The Thyssen panel is generally considered the best of the series and is the one most commonly attributed to Ercole himself. It was formerly in the collection of the Dutch banker Friedrich Gutmann, who loaned it to an exhibition of Ferrarese Renaissance paintings at the Villa Favorita in 1934 and sold it to Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza a year later. It has been cut at the top and, more considerably, at the right edge. It was attributed to Lorenzo Costa when included in the Rinascimento a Ferrara exhibition held at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in February-June 2023. 

Milan. Brera.
*Madonna and Child with Saints ('Portuense Altarpiece'). Canvas (transferred from panel), 323 x 240.
This large altarpiece is Ercole’s only surviving documented work. It was painted for the church of Santa Maria in Porto Fuori, near Ravenna, and Ercole received payments on the 26 March and 7 May 1481. Bernardino da Venezia carved the frame. The composition was probably influenced by the early sacra conversazione altarpieces painted in Venice by Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini. The Madonna is enthroned on an extraordinarily high pedestal between St Anne, who reaches out to touch a bird in the Christ Child’s hand, and St Elizabeth, seated praying. St Augustine stands below on the left; he was the patron saint of the Canonici Lateranensi, who officiated at the church and commssioned the altarpiece. On the right is the Blessed Pietro degli Onesti. He founded the church at the beginning of the twelfth century as a votive offering after surviving a shipwreck, and the stormy sea viewed through the open pedestal of the throne probably refers to his miraculous deliverance. On the base of the throne are scenes in simulated bronze of the Massacre of the Innocents, Adoration of the Magi and Presentation in the Temple. The marble reliefs on the spandrels of the vaulted canopy represent Samson with the jawbone of an ass and David with the head of Goliath.
The church of Santa Maria in Porto Fuori was shut in 1798, and the picture was moved first to the church of San Francesco at Ravenna and thence to the Brera in 1811. It was traditionally ascribed to 'Stefano da Ferrara' (an obscure painter mentioned by Vasari as a friend of Mantegna) and was first recognised as a work of Ercole at the end of the nineteenth century (by Adolfo Venturi). The documentary proof of Ercole's authorship was published in 1904 (by Corrado Ricci in Rassegna d'Arte).
   
Modena. Galleria Estense.
*Death of Lucretia. Wood, 48 x 34.
After her rape by Sextus, Lucretia is about to stab herself before her husband Collatinus and cousin Lucius Junius Brutus (who faces the viewer). A late work in poor condition. One of a series of panels of heroines of classical antiquity, which includes the Brutus and Portia at Ford Worth and the Wife of Hasdrubal at Washington. They have sometimes been regarded as studio or collaborative works, executed partly by Gianfrancesco Maineri (a painter from Parma who was employed at the Este court at Ferrara). The Lucretia has been recorded in the Este collection since 1624.

Paris. Louvre.
St Michael; St Apollonia. Wood, 27 x 11.
St Michael, a warrior in Roman armour, weighs souls and, with his spear raised, stands over the defeated devil. St Apollonia, supposedly a beautiful girl tortured by her teeth being extracted by pincers, displays the instrument of her martyrdom. Two of seven surviving little panels of saints in niches; the others are at Ferrara, Rotterdam and Venice (Cini collection). There were probably twelve or fourteen such panels originally, which decorated the frame of the Griffoni Altarpiece, painted by Francesco Cossa and the young Ercole de’ Roberti in about 1473 for San Petronio, Bologna. The St Michael and St Apollonia passed through the Cholmondeley, Northwick and Rothchild collections in the nineteenth century, and were given to the Louvre in 1899. They were first attributed to Ercole by Berenson in 1907.

Rome. Vatican Pinacoteca.
*Miracles of St Vincent Ferrer. Wood, 30 x 215.
Identified in 1888 by Gustavo Frizzoni as the predella of the Griffoni Altarpiece, which was dedicated to St Vincent Ferrer. Vasari ascribed the predella to Ercole, claiming that it is a better painting than the main panel by Cossa (now in the National Gallery, London). Some modern critics think that Ercole only helped in the execution of the predella, while others think that he was responsible for the planning and composition as well. The seven-foot predella is unusual in that it has no framing to divide the scenes. The miracles depicted are: a pregnant woman injured in a fall prays to the saint to save her unborn child; the saint raises a Jewish woman from the dead (or exorcises an evil spirit); a man with a bleeding leg awaits the intervention of the saint; the saint appears in the sky to save a small boy trapped in a burning house; and a baby, mutilated and cooked by its mad mother, is restored to life at the saint’s tomb. (This last, very striking miracle tale is illustrated in three parts. The first shows the deranged mother leaning on her elbow, while her chopped-up baby lies on the table behind. The second shows the father carrying the dismembered body to Vincent's tomb. The third shows the baby at the tomb – whole again and standing in a basin.) The predella is recorded in 1830 (as by Mantegna or Melozzo) in the possession of Francesco Brizi, a picture dealer from Città di Castello. It was purchased from him by the Papal Government in 1839. Seven small panels of standing saints from the pilasters of the Griffoni Altarpiece are also attributed to Ercole. They are now divided between the Cini collection at Venice (three), the Louvre (two), the Ferrara Pinacoteca and the Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum at Rotterdam.  

Rome. Palazzo Venezia (on deposit). Formerly Blumenstihl Collection.
Pietà (copy). Wood, 174 x 137.
The dead Christ, stretched across the knees of the Virgin Mary, is mourned by the Three Maries, John the Evangelist, and two male donors dressed as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. The reliefs on the arch represent David with the Head of Goliath and Judith with the Head of Holofernes. The picture is usually called the Blumenstihl Pietà after the previous owner, the Alsatian Count Bernardo Blumenstihl. It was placed on deposit at the Palazzo Venezia in the early 1990s. A 1621 guidebook to the churches of Ferrara (Compendio Historico by Marcantonio Guarini) records that in the church of San Domenico there was a 'dead Christ, and other figures to the right of the high altar, by Ercole Grandi'. The Blumenstihl Pietà was once considered the original of the San Domenico picture. (It was accepted as such, for example, by Berenson in the early twentieth-century editions of his North Italian Painters and, tentatively, by Wilhelm Suida in his 1960 monograph on Ercole.) But it has long been recognised as an early copy. There has been a recent attribution to Giovanni Francesco Maineri, a painter from Parma who worked at the Este court at Ferrara and is known to have finished an altarpiece by Ercole. The picture has suffered badly from flaking and has been restored many times (most recently in 2002 and 2014).
Another version of the Pietà – formerly in the Pinacoteca Nazionale at Bologna and now in the Pinacoteca at Ferrara – probably dates from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century and is sometimes attributed to Sebastiano Filippi (called Bastianino). It reverses the composition, omits some figures, adds others, and has a landscape background.      

Rotterdam. Boyman-Van Beuningen Museum.
Saint Anthony Abbot. Wood, 26 x 11.
The bearded monk, standing almost in profile in a fictive niche, is identified as St Anthony Abbot by the bell he holds in his left hand and his crutch in the form of a tau-cross. This small vertical panel came from the left-hand pilaster of the Griffoni Altarpiece. It formerly belonged to the Viennese banker Stephan von Auspitz, whose collection was broken up after the Austrian financial crisis of 1931.

Sarasota (Florida). Ringling Museum of Art.
Dormition of the Virgin (copy). Canvas, 222 x 327.
The Dormition of the Virgin was one of two great frescoes – the other was the Crucifixion – painted by Ercole de' Roberti during the 1480s in the Garganelli Chapel in the church of San Pietro at Bologna. The fresco is described in some detail by Vasari, who says that it included both Ercole's own portrait and that of Domenico Garganelli, the owner of the chapel. It was destroyed in 1605, when the church was rebuilt. The copy does not represent the whole composition. The left-hand part (which included the two portraits mentioned by Vasari) is recorded in another partial copy, now in the Louvre.
The Ringling copy may have been made for the Marchese Tanari of Bologna, who salvaged some fragments of the frescoes when the old church of San Pietro was demolished. It was sold to an English dealer in 1832 and ended up in the Virginia Street Catholic Chapel in Wapping, London, and then St Patrick's church in Wapping. It was recognised as a copy of Ercole de' Roberti's fresco in 1927 (by Charles Holmes in the Burlingham Magazine), and was acquired the same year by the American circus impresario John Ringling.  

Venice. Cini Collection.
St George; St Jerome; St Catherine of Alexandria. Wood, each 26 x 9.
The three saints, shown standing in shallow niches, are immediately identifiable. St George's shield is emblazoned with his red cross and he tramples on the dragon he has slain. St Jerome is represented as a cardinal studying his Latin translation of the Bible. St Catherine is shown with a book, symbolising her precocious learning, and the spiked wheel on which she was tortured. These three small vertical panels belonged to the altarpiece painted by Cossa and Ercole in about 1473 for the Griffoni Chapel in San Petronio at Bologna. They decorated the right-hand pilaster of the frame. The St George was once in the Costabili collection at Ferrara, and was later in the collections of Alexander Barker and Lord Rosebery in London. The St Jerome and St Catherine were formerly in the Benson collection, London, and later with the dealer Contini Bonacossi in Florence.

Washington. National Gallery.
*Wife of Hasdrubal. Wood, 47 x 31.
This small picture was once called ‘Medea and Her Sons’. The current interpretation was suggested by Edmund G. Gardner in 1911. After the cowardly Hasdrubal had surrendered to the Romans, his nameless wife preserved her honour by immolating herself and her children in the burning temple of Carthage (Book III of Valerius Maximus's Memorable Doings and Sayings). The picture is first recorded in 1812 in the possession of Count Étienne Méjan of Milan (secretary of Eugène Beauharnais); by 1878 in the Cook collection at Richmond; and acquired by the National Gallery in 1965. The Brutus and Portia, also formerly in the Cook collection and now in the Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth, and the Death of Lucretia at Modena are from the same series. They are late works, perhaps dating from the early 1490s.
*Giovanni II Bentivoglio and His Wife. Two panels, each 54 x 38/39.
The portraits, which recall Piero della Francesca's famous double portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, show the sitters in profile, facing each other. The couple are splendidly attired. His doublet of maroon velvet brocade is embroidered with gold thread and trimmed at the neck with white fur. The borders of her brown velvet gown are adorned with gemstones and pearls, and her underdress is of precious cloth of gold. Her fair hair is elaborately dressed in the shape of horns (a corni) and covered with silk scarves. There are views of Bologna's city walls and towers through the windows behind. The background curtains (previously repainted) are badly worn and were originally bright blue. Giovanni II succeeded Sante Bentivoglio as ‘principal citizen’ of Bologna in 1463 and retained power until 1506, when Julius II restored the Papal State. He died in exile in 1508. He married his predecessor’s widow – the ruthless and cruel Ginevra Sforza. The identities of the two sitters are established by the resemblance to other painted and sculpted portraits (including those in Lorenzo Costa’s altarpiece of 1488 in the Bentivolgio Chapel of San Giacomo Maggiore at Bologna). To judge from the apparent ages (Giovanni was born in 1443 and Ginevra in 1438), the two profile portraits probably date from around 1475-80. They may originally have been framed together to form a portable folding diptych. Roberto Longhi's attribution to Ercole dates from 1934. It is now generally accepted, following earlier attributions to Cossa (Bode) and to Gianfrancesco Maineri or Francesco Bianchi Ferrari (Berenson). The portraits were acquired in Italy by the French art critic Louis Charles Timbal, who sold them in 1872 to Gustave Dreyfus of Paris. Dreyfus’s children sold his entire collection in 1930 to Duveen, who sold the pair of portraits to Samuel H. Kress in 1936.