God the Father

Bernardino CampiWW-1567-119010

1567·Black chalk, heightened with white gouache, squared in black chalk, on gray-brown laid paper, laid down on cream laid paper·21.2 × 36.8 cm (8 3/8 × 14 1/2 in.)

<p>Initially unattributed, this drawing was owned by the renowned Italian drawings scholar Philip Pouncey, who found it was a study for the central fresco executed by Bernardino Campi in the dome of San Sigismondo in Cremona between 1567 and 1570. Born in Cremona and trained in Mantua and Milan, Campi must have recalled the ceiling frescoes of Michelangelo and Correggio in his powerful evocation of God the Father.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1567
Medium: Black chalk, heightened with white gouache, squared in black chalk, on gray-brown laid paper, laid down on cream laid paper
Dimensions: 21.2 × 36.8 cm (8 3/8 × 14 1/2 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Bernardino Campi

Artist

Bernardino Campi

Painting

Bernadino Campi (1522–1591) was an Italian Renaissance painter from Cremona, who worked in Reggio Emilia. He is known as one of the teachers of Sofonisba Anguissola and of Giovanni Battista Trotti. In Cremona, his extended family owned the main artistic studios. Giulio Campi and Antonio Campi, half-brothers, were distant relatives of Bernardino; the latter is generally considered the most talented of the family. All were active and prominent painters locally. Influences on Bernardino include local Cremonese such as Camillo Boccaccino and artists from neighbouring regions such as Correggio, Parmigianino and Giulio Romano. He made a number of sets of copies of the Eleven Caesars by Titian, then in the Gonzaga collection, adding one of Domitian, which he based on a work by Giulio Romano. Titian's originals were all lost in an 18th-century fire in Madrid.

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