Leandro Ventura. Lorenzo Leonbruno: Un pittore a corte nella Mantova di primo Cinquecento. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1995. 188 illus. + 354 pp. IL 90,000. ISBN: n.a.

Abstract

ISBN: n.a. Renaissance Mantua's artistic reputation is founded on the accomplishments of outsiders summoned there by the Gonzaga. These included Pisanello, who came from Venice and Verona; Mantegna from Padua; and Giulio Romano ('the Roman')-artists whose brilliance cast a shadow over the local talent. Leandro Ventura has set out to rescue one Mantuan, Lorenzo Leonbruno (1477?-1537), from obscurity, a task made more difficult by the small number of his surviving works (here whittled down to nine traced paintings, two drawings, and some frescos in the Ducal Palace, S. Barnaba, and S. Maria del Gradaro). In the only monograph on Leonbruno since Girolamo Prandi's of 1825, Ventura sifts through documents and works to establish a more complete portrait of this court painter, who had his greatest success during the interregnum between t h e d e a t h of M a n t e g n a (1 5 0 6) a n d t h e arrival of G i u l i o Romano (1524). As a young man in the 1490s, Leonbruno inherited his adoptive father's workshop (and wife). Errands to Florence (1504) and Venice (1511) broadened his artistic horizons. Then, in 1521, the new marquis, Federico Gonzaga, sent Leonbruno to Rome in order to study antique and modern art-"cose assai da imitare"-under the care of Baldassare Castiglione (48, doc. 44). Back in Mantua, Leonbruno promised to create "new bizzarrie never before seen" (doc. 50); the groteschi popularized in Rome by Pinturicchio and Raphael are featured prominently in Leonbruno's decoration of Isabella d'Este's apartments (1522-23). Ventura identifies another 1523 documented work, a corridor painted with "columns and landscapes and verdure" (doc. 61), with frescos in the Palazzo Ducale. Although greatly deteriorated, these are among the rare examples of extaht Renaissance landscape frescos and need to be integrated into this important aspect of palace and villa decoration (cf. Juergen Schulz, "Pinturicchio and the Revival of Antiquity," Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes, 1962). Leonbruno's illusionistic landscapes also have a Roman impetus, although not just Peruzzi's Sala delle Prospettive in the Villa Farnesina (162), but perhaps also Pinturicchio's landscapes in the Villa Belvedere. (It may be more than coincidental that Leonbruno framed the views with an arcade inspired by Bramante's Belvedere courtyard.) Giulio Romano's presence in Mantua (1524-46) dealt a critical blow to Leonbruno's career, as poignantly evoked in the latter's pained letter of January