Lot 20: Defendente Ferrari (Chivasso c. 1490- c. 1535)

Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist
oil on panel
9 x 13 1/2 in (22.8 x 34.3 cm.) with a 1 1/2 x 13 1/2 in. (3.8 x 34.3 cm.) addition to the bottom

Lt.-Col. Sir Walter Bromley-Davenport, Wootton Hall and Capesthorne.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 26 June 1970, lot 80.

Defendente Ferrari, a painter active in Piedmont between circa 1500-35, was born in Chivasso, near Turin, where he trained with Giovanni Martino Spanzotti. Ferrari's early works, such as The Virgin enthroned with Saints of 1505-7 (Cathedral, Turin), clearly reveal his teacher's influence. Ferrari's interest in northern European late Gothic art continued into the first years of the sixteenth century, as is evident in his earliest works. After around 1510 Ferrari's paintings reflected an awareness of artistic developments in central Italy, which, combined with older Gothic elements, informed the painter's characteristically sophisticated refinement. In the 1520s he focused on intensely emotional narratives on a smaller scale, of which the present Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist is exemplary. A prolific artist, Ferrari depended upon a large and successful workshop; the hand of a gifted assistant known as 'Pseudo-Giovanni' has been identified in some of the master's later commissions. While the date of Defendente's death is not recorded, his final documented painting, The Virgin enthroned between Saints Crispin and Cripinianus (San Giovanni, Avigliana, Turin), is dated 1535.