Bernardino India (Verona, 1528 – 1590) attr. (1570

Bernardino India (Verona, 1528 – 1590) attributed. (c. 1570) Madonna with Child and Saint Oil on canvas, 90 x 76 cm With frame, 112 x 96 cm The Veronese school of painting in the second half of the sixteenth century is situated in a historical and artistic context of great ferment, characterized by an intense dialectic between the different Italian schools. The city of Verona, under the dominion of the Republic of Venice, was deeply influenced by the artistic culture of the Serenissima, absorbing its stylistic codes and technical innovations. However, the Veronese school managed to maintain its own identity, elaborating an original and recognizable pictorial language. Veronese artists reworked Mannerist models, adapting them to their own pictorial language and creating works characterized by a certain artificiality and refined elegance. Among the major exponents of the second half of the sixteenth century, we remember Paolo Veronese, with his monumental compositions, and Felice Brusasorci, who knew how to combine Venetian and Florentine influences. Bernardino India, with his refined chromatic sensibility, also contributed to defining the identity of the Veronese school. Bernardino India fully participates in the debate on the reception of Mannerism in Veneto. His training in the workshop of Domenico Brusasorci places him in direct relation with the stylistic evolutions of the period, characterized by an increasing attention to the line and the elongated figure, direct heritage of Parmigianino; with a marked sensitivity to color and light. The analysis of his works reveals a predilection for sacred subjects, often represented with a formal elegance that brings them closer to the models of Mannerist sculpture. India's figures, elongated and slender, move in two-dimensional spaces, characterized by a careful geometric construction. The light, soft and enveloping, delicately models the volumes, giving the works an intimate and collected atmosphere. Born in 1528 in Verona, little is known about his artistic training, but, given his prolific activity as a fresco painter, it is possible that he attended one of the great decorators of the previous generation: Giovanni Maria Falconetto, Giovanni Francesco Caroto, Francesco India, or perhaps the younger Domenico Brusasorci. He debuted, between 1550 and 1555, frescoing Olympic divinities and grotesques, these in collaboration with Eliodoro Forbicini, in two rooms on the ground floor of the Sanmicheliano palace Canossa in Verona. Immediately after, perhaps as early as 1552, he moved to Vicenza to decorate the palace that Marcantonio Thiene had just had built by Andrea Palladio. Here he began a fruitful collaboration with a group of decorators active for twenty years in the great Palladian villas: Anselmo Canera and Bartolomeo Ridolfi, both from Verona, and Alessandro Vittoria from Trentino. By 1558 the painter had created the fresco decoration - of which fragments remain at the Museo degli affreschi Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle - on the minor facade of the destroyed palace of Fiorio dei Fiori depicting the Allegories of the cities of Rovigo, Verona and Treviso. The seventh decade also sees a not negligible production of altarpieces, some of which were executed by India with Orlando Flacco: the Madonna with Child, angels and Saints Vigilio and John the Baptist of the Museo civico di Castelvecchio and the lost altarpiece for S. Zeno of 1563. Along the course of the eighth decade of the India was called by the patronage of San Bernardino. The painter had the opportunity to license two altarpieces for the church: the first, auguring the Adoration of the Shepherds, the second, with the Virgin and Saint Anne of 1579. The present work can be compared, for stylistic and compositional references, with some works of India: the Annunciation of the Parish Church of Colognola ai Colli, the Madonna with Child and San Giovannino of the Istituto Proti Malacarne Vajenti, Vicenza or even the Madonna with Child and Sant’Anna of the Church of San Bernardino, Verona, in which the face of the Virgin undeniably recalls that of the saint depicted here.