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Italian Renaissance Learning Resources

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Art

Aspertini, Amico

(b Bologna, 1474–5; d Bologna, 19 Nov 1552).

Italian painter, sculptor, illuminator, printmaker and draughtsman. He was born into a family of painters, and his youthful facility reportedly astonished his contemporaries. His work developed in the Emilian–Ferrarese tradition of Ercole de’ Roberti, Lorenzo Costa the elder and, above all, Francesco Francia. Until the re-evaluation by Longhi, critical assessment of Amico’s oeuvre was over-reliant on literary sources, especially Vasari’s unsympathetic account of an eccentric, half-insane master . . .  Longhi presented Amico as a creative master whose expressive intensity and sensitive use of colour rescued Bolognese painting of the early 16th century from sterile echoes of Raphael. Today Aspertini is viewed as an influential precursor of Mannerism . . .

Phyllis Pray Bober