Boccaccio Boccaccino

Boccaccio Boccaccino painted soft, glowing Madonnas and saints with rich draperies, warm colour and a gentle grace. He worked between Ferrara, Venice and Cremona, and his best pictures combine Venetian colour with clear central Italian forms, so well that some were once credited to Perugino and Pinturicchio.

He was born in Ferrara around 1467 and trained there, probably under Domenico Panetti. His major achievement is the cycle of frescoes of the life of the Virgin in Cremona Cathedral, painted between 1506 and 1519, and he ran an influential workshop in Cremona, where Garofalo studied. His Marriage of Saint Catherine is in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. His son Camillo also became a painter. He died in Cremona around 1525.

The small Gypsy Girl in the Uffizi is his best-known portrait, a direct and quietly observed head of a young woman.