Critical itinerary of Gasparo Cairano

The intricate critical itinerary of Gasparo Cairano, which began while the sculptor was alive and today is not yet fully concluded after more than five hundred years, has seen the contribution of numerous critical voices and the consequent production of a bibliography that is particularly consistent and varied in content, directed, however, to the almost total misrecognition of the author and his production.

Gasparo Cairano, Caprioli Adoration (detail, 1495-1500), whose authorship has been the subject of much debate since the 19th century.

Along with Gasparo Cairano, the historiographical parable of Brescian Renaissance sculpture and its other protagonists have never received the honors of artistic and literary culture, remaining in a forgotten sphere even by the local sources themselves. The main reason for this is to be found in a very long series of errors, omissions and misunderstandings that occurred in the literary field right from the beginning, which led to a real oblivion of the cultural and qualitative level reached by the Brescian school in the thirty years between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as of the names of its protagonists.

The loss of archival documents or of the works themselves, often fragmented if not destroyed, has certainly contributed to this, although much has been preserved. It is only since the second half of the twentieth century that new studies, supported by recovered archival sources, have allowed the critical rediscovery not only of Gasparo Cairano, but of the entire chapter of the Brescian Sculptural Renaissance, a panorama that is still incomplete in many respects and that is occasionally filled in by new studies of documents and works.

Gasparo Cairano's critical itinerary through the centuries

The silence of contemporary literature

Among the most onerous silences is certainly that of local artistic literature and contemporary to the events. Firstly, the date of the visit to Brescia of Marin Sanudo, a potential admirer of the flowering of the local Renaissance, who transited there in 1483, some years before the opening of the building site of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, is unfavorable. Marcantonio Michiel, on the other hand, does not devote any chapter of his Notizia d'opere di disegno composed in 1521 to Brescia: he does, however, mention Gasparo Cairano, saying he was the brother of “Anzolino Bressano, ovver Milanese,” a master of terracotta, providing a valuable recollection of the Brescian sculptor at least four years after his death.

There is no mention of Gasparo Cairano in Elia Capriolo's chronicle of c. 1505, which provides only a vague mention of the Brescian Renaissance flowering of those years and its protagonists, “the Painters, the Goldsmiths, and the Sculptors, emulators of Apelles, and Praxiteles,” and reserving praise only for the later Stefano Lamberti. Even the humanist Vosonius, in c. 1498, in a Latin carmen dedicated to Brescia, sings its praises with classic poetic rhetoric, even mentioning the Palazzo della Loggia but without naming any sculptors. Similarly, the name of Cairano and, in general, of any other figure in the Brescian sculptural scene of the time is not to be found in Pandolfo Nassino's and Lucillo Ducco's manuscripts.

Yet Gasparo Cairano must have enjoyed a certain notoriety post mortem, as Michiel's citation shows. Such an oblivion is also inexplicable in light of Gasparo's descendants, for whom documents attest personalities active in various artistic fields for at least two generations: still between 1545 and 1561 Gasparo Cairano "the Younger," also a sculptor, son of Simone and thus grandson of Gasparo "the Elder," from whom he even took his baptismal name, is recorded in various archival sources.

A vanished promise of glory: the quotation of Pomponius Gauricus

Portrait of Pomponius Gauricus.

Gasparo Cairano is dedicated a single, illustrious citation in the historiography of the time: the De Sculptura by Pomponius Gauricus, published in Florence in 1504. The humanist offers the Brescian sculptor a flattering memorial in Latin, not casually mentioning the Palazzo della Loggia and the incomparable cycle of the Caesars:

Dignus et qui nominetur Brixiani praetorii architectura et Caesaribus Gaspar Mediolanensis

Noteworthy for the architecture of the Praetorian Palace of Brescia and the Caesars, Gasparo Milanese

—Pomponius Gauricus, De sculptura, pp. 254-255.

This note bestows great honor on the sculptor and his Caesars, as well as on the entire architecture of the Loggia, who just twelve years after the start of the construction site found a place alongside the great protagonists of Italian sculpture of all times, in a publication of profound artistic culture and expressly dedicated to figurative matters, the only Lombard sculptor named besides Cristoforo Solari. Gauricus does not cite the refined carvings of the sanctuary of the Miracles, but rather the architecture and mighty old-fashioned busts of the Loggia, conveying a clear signal of liking toward the modernity transposed in these works. A real promise of glory, however, destined to remain within the pages of De Sculptura: after the first, successful Florentine edition in 1504, the treatise would not be published again in Italy for at least three hundred years, finding some diffusion only beyond the Alps. No reference to Gauricus, in fact, is attested in local sources and, in general, in all art literature until the 19th century.

Giorgio Vasari's misunderstanding and fall into oblivion

Self-portrait of Giorgio Vasari.

However, the main responsibility for the fall into oblivion of the figure of Gasparo Cairano, and the birth of a whole series of misunderstandings about him, lies with Giorgio Vasari. In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, in the section devoted to Lombards, the scholar states that he has been "lately in Brescia," after which he sings the praises of the great masters of local painting, noting a marked interest in the subject of the picture more than others. Renaissance sculpture is mentioned only in passing in the few words devoted to the Luganese Giovanni Gaspare Pedoni, “who has done many things in Cremona and Brescia [...] that are beautiful and laudable,” blatantly misunderstanding the artist's identity. This misunderstanding, of considerable significance for artistic criticism in the centuries to come, is indeed singular, given that Pedoni is completely absent from the panorama of Renaissance Brescia, both in terms of documents and works produced.

At the time of his visit to Brescia and the compilation of the pages devoted to it, Vasari was certainly aware of Pomponius Gauricus' De Sculptura, where the "Gaspar Mediolanensis," author of the Caesars of the Loggia, is named. However, it is likely that no Brescian was able to tell him more about this sculptor, at least according to the ignorance manifested by the albeit erudite local sources of the time, especially since sculptural tastes had by then radically changed with Jacopo Sansovino's Mannerist revolution. Not coincidentally, in fact, the only Brescian sculptor mentioned by Vasari is Giacomo Medici, a disciple of Sansovino. Having, in addition, information about Pedoni's activity in nearby Cremona, Vasari probably ended up making the two personalities coincide, identifying in Gaspare Pedoni Luganese, that is, Milanese, the "Gaspar Mediolanensis" of Gauricus and, perhaps, attributing local ignorance to the sculptor's foreign origin. With the publication of the Lives, Gasparo Cairano's name was erased from Brescian historical and anagraphical notions for at least two hundred years.

By the end of the sixteenth century, Brescian art literature, although interested in the works of its own past, especially the Loggia and its rich palimpsest of sculptures, no longer had any way of identifying the names of the sculptors who had produced them. An example of this is Patrizio Spini's Supplimento, composed in 1585 as an appendix to the vernacular edition of Elia Capriolo's chronicle: Spini offers the reader a long digression on the Loggia, in which the exaltation of every artistic detail of the palace decisively clashes with the total silence about the names of the artists responsible for such magnificence. Moreover, the participation in the building site of the palace, restarted from the middle of the century, of great names such as Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea Palladio and Galeazzo Alessi had diverted the interest of scholars to mainly architectural matters, putting sculptural features in the background.

The last sixteenth-century citation of Gasparo Cairano is to be found not in Brescia but in Salò: Bongianni Grattarolo, in his Historia della Riviera di Salò composed in 1587 and printed in Brescia in 1599, mentions “a master Gasparo Bresciano” as the author of the portal of the cathedral. However, this is merely an onomastic remembrance, completely disconnected from his historical and artistic identity, as well as from the works produced by the sculptor in the city.

Between the 17th and 18th centuries

The ark of Saint Apollonius (1508-1510).

Having reached the seventeenth century, Brescian art literature by now turned to the local Renaissance scene only to exalt its school of painting and its great protagonists - Moretto, Romanino and Vincenzo Foppa - leaving the flourishing field of sculpture distinctly unexplored without, however, seeking any remedy for this void, almost as if the problem did not exist. In the same period, moreover, in Brescia as in the rest of northern Italy, a particular type of local art literature of an anti-Vasarian nature was spreading, aimed at redeeming all the personalities neglected in the Lives, but this new trend, too, did not lead to significant results. In Brescia, the most important text of this genre is Ottavio Rossi's Elogi Historici di Bresciani illustri, printed in 1620, in which the author sings the praises of all the most famous Brescian painters. However, the only local sculptor mentioned is the Sansovinesque Giacomo Medici, the same one named by Giorgio Vasari and even qualified as "one of the rarest sculptors in Italy." The idea that productions such as the façade of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and the Caesars of the Loggia predate Medici does not seem to concern the Brescian scholar, although this may depend on a genuine misunderstanding of styles prior to the Mannerism introduced by Sansovino. A new critical current was thus inaugurated, that of Giacomo Medici's illustrious Brescian works, with substantial repercussions in the bibliography following Rossi.

Also in the seventeenth century, however, the first flashes of interest in the sculptural works of the Brescian Renaissance began, completely misunderstood but nevertheless able to arouse the curiosity of local literature. First comes Bernardino Faino's guide to the city, the oldest in order of time among historical guides to Brescia. The scholar saw the ark of St. Apollonius and its "small, beautiful histories of the saint," taking care to specify that "the author of this work is not known, being an ancient thing." Similarly, the Caprioli Adoration, which Faino saw correctly fitted in the lost tomb of Luigi Caprioli in San Giorgio, is said to be "a diligently made thing, a very antique thing." Similar praise for the Caprioli relief is found in Francesco Paglia's Giardino della Pittura, written between 1675 and 1713. In the chapter devoted to the old cathedral, after paying homage to the funeral monument of Domenico Bollani by Alessandro Vittoria, Paglia finds that "it is best to omit certain other little things." referring to none other than the ark of Berardo Maggi and the funeral monument of Domenico de Dominici, in order to admire an “ark carved with beautiful figures of candid marble,” namely, the ark of St. Apollonius, which was stored in the winter cathedral in those years. In his praise of the Loggia, Paglia also ventured some attributions involving Bramante and again Giacomo Medici, whose names he took from earlier literature.

Considerations on the same level as the previous ones were also elaborated by Giulio Antonio Averoldi in his guide to Brescia printed in 1700, in which the sculptures of San Pietro in Oliveto are also extensively praised, by Francesco Maccarinelli's guide, composed in the mid-eighteenth century and, to a lesser extent, by Giovanni Battista Carboni's guide of 1760. It is notable, however, how Carboni's Notizie istoriche delli pittori, scultori e architetti bresciani are totally lacking in information about local Renaissance sculptors.

Zamboni's research and the revival of the name of Cairano

Detail of the sculptures and architectural elements of the Brescian Loggia (1495-1505).

Gasparo Cairano, Caesar (late 15th century).

From the middle of the 18th century, therefore, there is the emergence of an unprecedented interest in the knowledge of Brescian art and its protagonists, present and past, certainly fostered by a cultural maturation in historical studies. Moreover, in this same period the Loggia was affected by a revitalization plan that would lead to the renovation of the square and the erection of Luigi Vanvitelli's new roof, which remained unfinished, with also a reawakening of Brescian municipal pride, which was centered, by its very nature, around the municipal palace. Within this renewed climate are therefore to be read the Memoirs published by Baldassarre Zamboni in 1778, apparently subsidized precisely by the Municipality. Zamboni's work represents, in fact, the first historical research in the modern sense of the term tackled by the Brescian literary scene, constructed by consulting, questioning and rearranging documents and comparing sources with historiography and material evidence. Tackling the problem from this point of view, and with these assumptions, Zamboni transcribed and publicized an enormous amount of information, drawing first from the still extant Provvisioni comunali, but above all from the lost, and at the time unknown, bulletin books of the Municipality of Brescia, drawing for the first time not only the real chronology, but also the names of all the protagonists of a completely forgotten historical phase. And so, finally:

The imperial heads then, as far as I can tell from the city bulletins, were almost all made by two hands. Gasparo da Milano made twenty-one, and Antonio della Porta six.

— Baldassarre Zamboni, Memorie intorno alle pubbliche fabbriche più insigni più insigni della città di Brescia, p. 44.

The importance of Baldassarre Zamboni's research lies precisely in having transcribed these documents, which are now lost: however, the gigantic amount of data collected allowed him to recompose only a very select synthesis, which nevertheless remains the only surviving evidence of the facts and names reported therein. The scholar's revolutionary discoveries were almost immediately taken up by Italian and even transalpine art literature. Zamboni also studied the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, limiting himself, however, to consulting only the municipal archives, which did not keep the account books, placed instead in the archives of the same church. The recovered documents, therefore, lead him to date the construction of the façade in 1557, superimposed on a "Chapel made tumultuously, and with extreme promptness" around 1488: thus, a precious opportunity was missed to transcribe information about this other construction, which would be lost a century later.

Resumption of the Vasarian misunderstanding

The new discoveries made in Brescia, however, were far from bringing the works and names of the Brescian Renaissance back to the honors of art literature, which, incredibly, was about to fall into a new, long chapter of errors and misunderstandings. In 1774, the Notizie istoriche de' pittori, scultori ed architetti cremonesi by Giovanni Battista Zaist was published, in which the author, dealing with Gaspare Pedoni, took a step toward Brescia to seek confirmation of Vasari's citation. And so, the façade of the sanctuary of the Miracles was completely attributed to Pedoni's chisel, as "it seems that this Work corresponds to the others of his, which we have here in Cremona, and made by him around the same time, as Giorgio Vasari thus says." The attribution elaborated by Zaist had very heavy repercussions on the artistic literature not only in Cremona, but also in Brescia, which among other things needed to fill the still open gap on the authorship of the work.

Thus one arrives at the end of the 18th century with a cognitive panorama of Brescian Renaissance sculptural reality that is more advanced than in the past, but perhaps also more confused by a real critical disassociation: Zamboni had by now given back without any doubt the authorship of the sculptures of the Loggia to Gasparo Cairano, as the main creator of them, and to all the other artists who had taken part in them, while the Vasarian error still weighed on the sanctuary of the Miracles, brought back to the fore by Zaist's completely unfounded attribution.

Nineteenth-century guides and studies

Portrait of Leopoldo Cicognara.

Nineteenth-century critical analyses were inaugurated by Leopoldo Cicognara's History of Sculpture, specifically the second volume, published in 1816, containing the chapter on Lombards. After discussing the Cremonese activity of Gaspare Pedoni, Cicognara moves on to Brescia and states:

The other celebrated ornamentalist and sculptor Cristoforo Pedoni, probably the son of the aforementioned one, worked a lot in Brescia in the elegant vestibule of the Madonna dei Miracoli.

— Leopoldo Cicognara, Storia della scultura, p. 186.

The historian's attribution contains many oddities: first, it is unclear why he attributes the Brescia facade to Cristoforo Pedoni, son of Gaspare, who may not even have been born at the time. More importantly, this is the only mention of the Brescian Renaissance period. There is no trace of Pomponius Gauricus, Michiel, or even the very recent discoveries of Baldassarre Zamboni. The situation becomes paradoxical in the moment when, one hundred and fifty pages later, he shows not only that he knew Zamboni but, after praising him for the meticulousness with which he investigated the Brescian archives, he further states:

He [Baldassarre Zamboni] enumerates about fifty sculptors for the pilasters [...] and other ornaments of the great hall known as the public palace in the loggia erected after the mid-1500s, and indicates the most minute circumstances, the agreements made, and the prices of each work, where the names of distinguished artists are preserved, as seen in the lavish compensation received, distinguishing among them Antonio Maria Colla from Padua and Ludovico Ranzi from Ferrara

— Leopoldo Cicognara, Storia della scultura, pp. 349-350.

Cicognara is ambiguous about practically everything, taking from Zamboni, whom he shows to know in detail, only dates and names concerning the late sixteenth-century construction of the Loggia, inexplicably omitting all data concerning the fifteenth-century phase. In addition, once he mentions the two foreign sculptors, the historian places the well-known Giacomo Medici alongside them, deducing him again from Giorgio Vasari and thus completing a reconstruction that at the same time manages to be both based on recent sources and erroneous and misleading.

In 1826 Paolo Brognoli, an art scholar and collector, published the first nineteenth-century guide to Brescia. For the correct attribution and dating of the works treated, the scholar proceeded to a series of archival research, which led him for the first time to elaborate precise stylistic considerations on what he observed. He appreciated the Martinengo Mausoleum, confessing that "I have not been able to get acquainted with the skilled artists of these works." For the ark of St. Apollonius he conducted a thorough search in the municipal archives, which allowed him to partially reconstruct the circumstances of the commission, however, he was unable to find "the contract with the sculptor who worked on this ark [...], being particularly interested in this because I too had in my rooms a sculpture of the same chisel made in 1494," "with the inscription that commemorated the memory of Luigi Caprioli." Brognoli is talking about none other than the Caprioli Adoration, which for the first time ever he knowingly links with another work by Gasparo Cairano, without relying on previous literary sources, but on purely stylistic considerations.

The dome of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli with Gasparo Cairano's cycle of Apostles and Antonio della Porta's cycle of Angels (1489).

Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, interior (last decade of the 15th century).

Soon after the publication of Brognoli's guide, the Athenaeum of Brescia commissioned Alessandro Sala to write a new guide, published in 1834. By the author's own admission, the work set out to offer only a practical support tool for tourist use, with no particular pretensions to informative depth. Sala, having to give information about the façade of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, consulted perhaps for the first time the church's archives, taking from them names and facts rendered, however, with the utmost synthesis. However, the information given by Sala was very important:

It is not clear who were the sculptors of the beautiful candelabra of the façade; nor is it found specified to which of the many artists mentioned, nor books of the building, the various marble works inside this sanctuary belong. The only thing we know is that the four doctors on the cornices of the first dome were made by Antonio della Porta, who also made the two hermits Anthony and Paul in low relief; not that the angels on the cornice of the same dome, above which Gaspare da Cairano placed the twelve apostles he carved in marble, were made by him.

— Alessandro Sala, Pitture ed altri oggetti di belle arti in Brescia, p. 90.

Sala then admits the existence of certain "books of the building," reporting that many artists were named in them, to whom, however, the works executed were not precisely attributed. It is not said explicitly, but it is clear that, drawing from the same sources, he is also able to write that “the first architect of this temple was a certain Maestro Jacopo,” which is very important and unique information from a literary point of view. The style of the guide, however, leads him not only to omit any dating, but also not to formulate any stylistic connection with the documented and homonymous Gasparo da Milano and Antonio della Porta active at the Loggia, nor to notice the onomastic coincidence between the mentioned Maestro Jacopo and Jacopo da Verona also active at the Loggia according to Zamboni: thus is lost yet another clarifying opportunity, which among other things could have been based on the basic, yet unfounded, "books of the building" of Santa Maria dei Miracoli.

All this led the subsequent bibliography not to give much attention to what Sala reported, or, rather, not to replace with Sala's insubstantial findings the entire earlier artistic literature, which remained as a point of reference to be supplemented with the names advanced by the Brescian scholar. In fact, it inaugurated the tendency to critically separate the facade of the sanctuary, on which Pedoni remained perched, from the interior sculptures. Emblematic in this sense is the passage in Federico Odorici's 1853 guide to Brescia concerning the church of the Miracles:

Even if Sala's researches to know the author of the beautiful marble chandeliers of this façade were in vain, we found out from a work of Picenardi that it was Gian Gaspare Pedoni. Inside, there are sculptures by Antonio della Porta and Gaspare da Cairano; but it is not easy to identify the authors of each one among the many different styles.

— Federico Odorici, Storie bresciane dai primi tempi fino all'età nostra narrate da Federico Odorici, pp. 99-100.

In this intricate attributive confusion, albeit partially correct, the only truly celebrated name, however, remained that of Pedoni, since Odorici appreciated much more the old-fashioned ornamentation of the façade than the interior statues, only named along with their authors who, in any case, did not go beyond onomastic reporting. No stylistic or attributive conjecture was in fact conducted on the decorations of the Loggia, nor on the ark of St. Apollonius, nor on the Martinengo Mausoleum, praised solely for their formal merit.

Renaissance enthusiasm in post-unification Brescia

Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, facade (late 15th century).

The unification of Italy, as for other Italian cities, also marked for Brescia the beginning of a new era of the institutions in charge of the protection of the artistic and monumental heritage, as well as its enhancement with targeted restoration, recovery or, sometimes, destruction of what was not deemed worthy of preservation. However, the renewed enthusiasm for the Brescian Renaissance on all fronts did not obtain, in parallel, a development of knowledge about its masters. Preceded by a quotation from Cocchetti in 1859, it is in Stefano Fenaroli's 1877 Dictionary of Brescian Artists that the sculptor Maffeo Olivieri appears for the first time in Brescian art literature, to whom Fenaroli, basing himself on the style of the two bronze candelabra in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, signed and dated, also attributes the medallions of the Martinengo Mausoleum.

This early critical openness of Olivieri toward Brescian Renaissance works would have heavy repercussions in the early 20th century. Fenaroli's dictionary represented a cornerstone for knowledge of Brescian art history: for the first time documentary research was conducted in municipal archives, deepening what had already been found by Zamboni, with discoveries of fundamental importance for artists such as Moretto, Romanino, Floriano Ferramola, Stefano Lamberti and others, reported discursively in the first section of the Dictionary. After a section devoted to documents, the volume closes with an appendix listing schematically the “names of Brescian artists whose works are unknown.” In the face of such a comprehensive literary work, the now-repeated absence of Gasparo Cairano, Tamagnino, and any personality in the field of sculpture at the time is surprising. Gasparo da Milano is nowhere mentioned, not even among the unknown artists, although archival documents mentioning his name are known.

This absence of names and facts of Brescian Renaissance sculpture is repeated inexorably in a series of later texts. Andrea Cassa, in his Appunti su alcuni monumenti bresciani, including Santa Maria dei Miracoli and the Loggia, shows that he has consulted the sanctuary's archives but mentions neither Gasparo Cairano nor Tamagnino, instead singing the praises of Giovanni Gaspare Pedoni for the admirable work on the facade. Incidentally, not finding Pedoni's name in the sanctuary's archives, information that would have supported his thesis, Cassa falsifies his own source, namely Baldassarre Zamboni's text, saying that the latter had found the name of Gaspare Pedoni in the Loggia's archives, when the only Pedoni reported by the scholar is his son Cristoforo Pedoni, active on some parts of the upper cornice in the second half of the 16th century. But even Giuseppe Merzario, in his important text I maestri comacini of 1893, has no doubts in identifying Gaspare Pedoni as the Gasparo of the Brescian documents, reconfirming him as the absolute protagonist of Brescian sculpture of the period.

Luigi Arcioni and the first critical about-face

Gasparo Cairano, Apostle (1489).

It was up to architect Luigi Arcioni to bring order to this messy panorama, debunking myths and giving due weight to certainties. Arcioni's contributions, at the time only partially published in the form of a series of articles between 1896 and 1897, concern the Loggia and the sanctuary of the Miracles, the two monuments whose restoration was of interest to the municipal commission in charge of the preservation of monuments, of which Arcioni was a member. The scholar carried out a real reckoning, collecting sure sources and excluding everything that could not be verified or, in some cases, could be disproved. The convinced assumption led to important results as early as the first article on the historiography of the sanctuary of the Miracles, published in 1896: he mentioned Gasparo Cairano, Antonio della Porta, Giovanni and Cristoforo dell'Ostello, noting their presence also in the Loggia's building site. In contrast, he excluded Gaspare Pedoni's authorship of the facade, not only because of the absence of his name in the documents, but for the first time on the basis of stylistic comparisons with his known Cremonese works. Correctly interpreting archival sources, however, he refrained from attributing it to Gasparo Cairano or Antonio della Porta, reported as figure painters and not decorators. He also recognized them as the same authors of the Caesar cycle on the fronts of the Loggia and appreciated their artistic evolution:

Gaspare da Cairano and Antonio della Porta, authors of the apostles, angels and doctors of the first dome, and most probably of the other sculptures among the capitals of the facade, and those of the choir, a few years later are called upon to make the imperial busts of our Loggia palace. And it is an interesting and beautiful fact to observe the progress of these craftsmen toward the new ideal of art.

— Valerio Terraroli, Luigi Arcioni. Progetti e restauri a Brescia tra Ottocento e Novecento, pp. 215-216.

For the first time in the art literature, he unified Antonio della Porta and the sculptor surnamed Tamagnino into a single artistic personality and linked the Master Jacopo found by Alessandro Sala, who had remained ignored until then, with the Jacopo da Verona mentioned in the Loggia documents.

While Luigi Arcioni published his important findings on Brescian Renaissance sculpture, the Milanese lecturer Alfredo Melani published in "Arte e Storia" in 1899 an article on the Martinengo Mausoleum, where attributions were made with some conviction without any documentary or bibliographical support:

Stefano Lamberti for the design and Giacomo Faustinetti for the execution. And since the monument is adorned with bronze medallions and bas-reliefs, their casting is attributed to Andrea Baruzzi, another Brescian artist.

— Alfredo Melani, Il monumento di Marc'Antonio Martinengo della Pallata a Brescia in "Arte e Storia", XVIII, 9-10, p. 59.

Most unlikely, above all, is the reference to Giacomo Faustinetti, who was more active in the 1550s. Instead, as the architect of the Church of Miracles, he goes so far as to cite a nonexistent "Jacopo del Sala" saying it was taken from the studies of Luigi Arcioni, when the latter, in his writings, actually mentions a "Jacopo del Sala" but trivially in reference to the Master Jacopo found by Alessandro Sala in 1834.

Meyer: Cairano returns to the critical scene

Gasparo Cairano, Martinengo Mausoleum, Scene of Sacrifice (post-1510).

Gasparo Cairano, Martinengo Mausoleum, Battle Scene (post 1510).

The first significant turning point for the historiography of Brescian Renaissance sculpture is the second volume of Alfred Gotthold Meyer's Oberitalienische Frührenaissance, published in Berlin in 1900: the text devotes an entire chapter to Brescian sculpture and architecture, identifying them for the first time as a specific critical case to be addressed separately from the broader Lombard context, with a detailed analysis of the works and bibliography, including local ones. However, the scholar made several dating and attribution errors, as well as some omissions, all due to the influence of the artistic literature contemporary to him. First, Meyer revisits Pomponius Gauricus' and Zamboni's "Gaspar mediolanensis" and separates it from the Gaspare Pedoni cited by Vasari, which he nevertheless takes into account. Drawing his own conclusions on the various locally published documents, from Sala to Arcioni, he then delineates the Brescian school as separated into two different operational sectors of decorators and figure painters: at the head of the first category he assigns Gaspare Pedoni and Stefano Lamberti, at the head of the second Gasparo Cairano and Antonio della Porta.

Declaring a definite predilection for Gasparo Cairano, Meyer proceeds to reconstruct a catalog of works, both known and presumed, each placed in a specific context of precise Lombard artistic references: to the documented Apostles of the Sanctuary of the Miracles and the Caesars of the Loggia he adds the ark of St. Apollonius, the Caprioli Adoration and the altar of St. Jerome in St. Francis, recognizing for the first time their absolute originality in the cylindrical transposition of Mantegna's Brawl of the Sea Gods. Meyer also assumes Gasparo's participation in the Martinengo Mausoleum, however, the long-standing misunderstanding about the dating of the monument, then dated between 1526 and 1530, leads the scholar to assign it almost entirely to Stefano Lamberti, whom he also sees as the author of the ornaments on the facade in Santa Maria dei Miracoli together with Pedoni. From the text, as already mentioned, are omitted significant works such as the reliefs of San Pietro in Oliveto and, above all, the portal of the cathedral of Salò, which perhaps the German scholar did not know.

However, the heavy cloak of critical misfortune weighing on the historiography of Brescian Renaissance sculpture and on the figure of Gasparo Cairano, an artist who was by then assuming ever greater depth and importance, must also have fallen on Meyer's original reconstruction: the redaction in archaic German greatly limited the dissemination of the text, which in fact knew very little success in Brescia, even going so far as to be ignored.

In the first thirty years of the 20th century, Meyer's text and other Brescian sources caused rather diversified repercussions on the critics who, according to different interpretations, dealt with the subject. Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri, in 1904, was one of the first to take into account the German scholar's contribution in his 1904 monograph on Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, dealing, however, with the Brescia issue only in a brief and hasty passage. The volume devoted to Brescia in the series "Artistic Italy," compiled in 1909 by Antonio Ugoletti, focused mainly on the Loggia and Santa Maria dei Miracoli, drawing on selected documents. Perhaps for the first time in several centuries, there is no mention of Gaspare Pedoni, a significant fact since it is a text with a touristic and popular appeal. On the contrary, Giorgio Nicodemi's guide to Brescia, published in the early 1920s, reconstructs a decidedly disorganized and fragmentary picture of Brescian Renaissance sculpture, making very general stylistic comparisons and never mentioning Gasparo Cairano, Tamagnino, or any other documented sculptor of the period. The overall result is decidedly poor and superficial, especially in relation to the artistic literature contemporary to him, which was by then approaching the Brescian question in a totally different way.

The lack of interest in Brescian Renaissance sculpture shown by Giorgio Nicodemi in this work is manifested with greater repercussions in his 1925 monograph on Bambaia, where he mentioned the two statuettes of Virtue attributing them to this sculptor without noticing that they are almost identical to the figures on the ark of St. Apollonius. Adolfo Venturi, on the other hand, in his 1924 History of Italian Art, addresses the Loggia and the sanctuary of the Miracles exclusively as matters of late 15th-century architecture, without a word about the sculptures, while Silvio Vigezzi, in his 1929 The Lombard Sculpture of the Sixteenth Century, reports the façade of the sanctuary of the Miracles under the chisel of Gaspare Pedoni, to whom he also attributes, without any documentary source or significant stylistic comparisons, the ark of St. Apollonius, the funeral monument of Nicolò Orsini and the Martinengo Mausoleum.

The archival research of Paolo Guerrini

Gasparo Cairano, Tomb of Gaspare Brunelli (1500).

In 1930 Paolo Guerrini, the foremost scholar of Brescian facts of the first half of the 20th century, published in the first volume of the Historical Memoirs of the Diocese of Brescia the contents of a series of documents of fundamental importance for the historiography of Brescian Renaissance sculpture. First, he reports several bills of payment for some sculpture work done in Santa Maria dei Miracoli in 1493, found by the scholar in the Brunelli family archives where they were located thanks to Gaspare Brunelli's role as deputy to the church's construction. After analyzing these bills, Guerrini published the contents of the Martinengo Mausoleum, which he found in the archives of Santa Maria dei Miracoli: the document, now lost and edited exclusively in Guerrini's text, hence its importance, represents a copy of various accounting data of the sanctuary's construction, containing payments to Cairano and Antonio della Porta for the two cycles of statues inside. Paolo Guerrini's contribution thus provides reliable documents of the time on which to base dates and attributions of the sanctuary's sculptures and is the only one of its kind, omitting the information provided by Sala a century earlier.

In addition, the Brunelli family archives had already allowed Paolo Guerrini in 1926 to discover a document attesting to “M. Gaspare da Milano,” identified, however, by the scholar in Pedoni, as the author of Gaspare Brunelli's funeral monument in San Francesco, adding yet another piece to Gasparo's historiography. Almost in parallel with Guerrini's archival investigations, other discoveries increased the sculptor's catalog. In 1920, Luigi Rivetti published for the first time the contract between "Gasparem de Cayrano de Mediolano lapicida architectum et ingeniarum optimum" and representatives of the municipality of Chiari, in the Brescia area, for the construction of the portal of the city's cathedral, while in 1932 Anton Maria Mucchi made known the archival papers relating to the commission and execution of the portal of the cathedral of Salò, where the name of "Gasparo da Milano" again emerges: his name at this point was known to critics, and his catalog, as well as his artistic abilities, gradually acquired more and more depth.

The great twentieth-century misunderstanding: Maffeo Olivieri

Martinengo Mausoleum (1503-1518).

Detail of the Martinengo Mausoleum (first decade of the 16th century).

Absent from any literary source of the time, whether edited or in manuscript, Maffeo Olivieri's name first surfaced in the art literature in 1847, when his signature was noted by Pietro Selvatico on the two bronze candelabra in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. The scholar rightly lamented the impossibility of finding information about this sculptor. Thirty years later, as already mentioned, Stefano Fenaroli disclosed how Maffeo Olivieri is actually mentioned in the Brescian registry of 1534 and hypothesized his authorship on the bronzes of the Martinengo Mausoleum, a proposal that remained without follow-up. Bode and Planiscig, in their extensive studies of early 20th-century bronzes, attributed a number of statuettes to him, while Hill, in 1930, identified him as the "Master of 1523," author of a series of medals. Remaining initially unknown to international critics, on the other hand, Giuseppe Papaleoni's discovery, published in Trent in 1890, that Maffeo Olivieri was also the author of the elaborate wooden altarpiece of the Assumption in Condino, as evidenced by the contract dated 1538.

Knowledge about Olivieri at the beginning of the 20th century, before the transformation of this sculptor into the absolute protagonist of Brescian Renaissance sculpture, was limited to this. The eventual talents of this evidently multifaceted artist, yet completely absent from the sources of the time, were first picked up by Antonio Morassi in a 1936 article. The scholar, convinced that he was in the presence of a decidedly important and undiscovered author, went to Brescia in search of important works that such a personality must have left behind. Therefore:

I was thus going around the churches of Bresciano and Brescia, where he had kept his workshop and whence he perhaps never for a long time moved, always in search of my author; and I was already despairing, proving fruitless even some archival investigation, of tracing his footsteps, when it occurred to me to visit the Christian Museum, in the deconsecrated church of Santa Giulia. [...] I stopped my attention on that distinguished masterpiece of Brescian sculpture that is the mausoleum of General Marc'Antonio Martinengo. I observed [...] the strange flavor of that style in which Gothic substrata, mixed with Baroque precursors, emerge, which is proper to the decorative art of Brescia in the sixteenth century. And I was thinking about the architectural relations of the monument with the portal of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, catching in it some leading threads that well clarify its northern origins, when, as I approached to examine the bronze medallions embedded in the plinths, I had the sensation that I was facing creations of the master I was researching. The resemblance, indeed, the partial identity, of these figures with those seated in the niches of the Venetian candelabra, which had well remained in my eyes, gave me the confidence that I had come, at last, to a good port. [...] Probably the bronze square panels of the sarcophagus, as well as the triumphal frieze in which the stylistic affinity to Condino's figures was evident, must also have belonged to him. Instead, I was left with some uncertainty about the possible attribution to Maffeo of the marble part.

— Antonio Morassi, Per la ricostruzione di Maffeo Olivieri in "Bollettino d'Arte", year XXX, 6, December 1936, pp. 243-245.

At this point in the article, Morassi was already convinced of Olivieri's authorship of the Martinengo Mausoleum's bronzes, while he still had doubts about the marble part, doubts that would be resolved later in the same article by purely deductive means. Morassi was also affected by the misunderstanding about the dating of the monument, which is generally linked to the burial of General Marcantonio Martinengo, who died in 1526, which goes to the scholar's aid in comparing it with the Venetian candelabra dated 1527. Moreover, Morassi also misunderstood Stefano Fenaroli's proposal to attribute the bronzes of the mausoleum to Olivieri, claiming that the Brescian scholar must have inferred their names from documents of the time, when this was clearly not possible since, in that case, Fenaroli would not have hesitated to include them in the documentary appendix of his Dictionary. After comparing the arches of Saint Apollonius and Saint Titian, Morassi proceeded to reconstruct the cultural context within which Olivieri must have been trained:

What were his masters in plastic art, it is difficult to say. The relations of his art with the pictorial atmosphere is obvious, and to this we shall return. Lacking, on the other hand, are names of Brescian sculptors of whom any light can be drawn on our artist. That Brescia had, around 1500 - that is, when Maffeo's education could have taken place - distinguished sculptors, is not known. Nor is it likely that they existed there, since for the most significant work of that time, the plastic decoration of the church of the Miracles, carvers from Como of somewhat jumbled stylistic tendencies came to Brescia [...]. The facade of the Miracles, with its fine work of bas-reliefs [...], therefore constituted, and certainly constituted for Olivieri, a model of the first order. [...] However, while Olivieri's architectural-decorative sense (also in the Venetian candelabra, as well as in the Martinengo Mausoleum) is of a distinctly Lombard orientation, the same cannot be said of the figural parts. The broad, soft, animated treatment of his figures, often modeled with synthesis and abbreviations, presupposes the abandonment of that naturalistic current that belongs to Amadeo and Briosco [...]. Olivieri's art developed in a most interesting phase of Brescian figurative art; and painting alone can provide us with the key to understand it.

— Antonio Morassi, Per la ricostruzione di Maffeo Olivieri in "Bollettino d'Arte", year XXX, 6, December 1936, pp. 246-247.

The statements elaborated by Morassi are as questionable as ever, especially on the basis of the knowledge by then established in those years about Brescian Renaissance sculpture. Disregarding the documented sculptors active in Brescia at the turn of the 1500s, whose existence is even questioned, he places painting as Olivieri's only reference: there is no Pomponius Gauricus, no Baldassarre Zamboni, no Alessandro Sala, no Luigi Arcioni, no Meyer, and no Guerrini. Incidentally, as already mentioned, by the end of the article the Martinengo Mausoleum is now finished under the sole name of Maffeo Olivieri, to whom Morassi literally puts the chisel in his hand.

Sanmicheli workshop, ark of Saint Titian (1505).

In the 1939 volume devoted to Brescia in the Catalogue of Things of Art and Antiquity in Italy, Antonio Morassi no longer had any doubts in attributing to Olivieri the qualification of sculptor and, therefore, proceeded to define his catalog of Brescian works in marble, of much greater quantitative and qualitative proportions than the medals and wooden altarpiece assigned up to that time. The Martinengo Mausoleum became "a most important work, certainly by Maffeo Olivieri." The ark of St. Apollonius was classified as "perhaps an early work of Maffeo Olivieri, as would be judged from the style, comparing the ark with Martinengo's funerary monument." Because of similarities with the mausoleum, the altar of St. Jerome in San Francesco also became "probably the work of Maffeo Olivieri." On the contrary, anything that could not be attributed to Maffeo Olivieri's style would not find the interest of Morassi, who completely omits any archival sources about individual works. He questioned the presence of Gaspare Pedoni on the facade of the sanctuary of the Miracles, but deliberately avoided mentioning Gasparo Cairano and Tamagnino, documented nine years earlier by Guerrini as the authors of more than twenty statues inside the sanctuary. He again ignored Paolo Guerrini and the "M. Gaspare da Milano" he found, classifying the Brunelli funeral monument as a "fine work by a Brescian sculptor in the style of Lamberti," while the Caprioli Adoration was relegated to an anonymous "Brescian author of the early 1500s, a pupil of Amadeo." Lastly, he dismissed the ark of Saint Titian, judged "not very fine."

From Antonio Morassi's reconstruction, which in some ways is almost unreasonable, the complex panorama of currents and artists of Brescian Renaissance sculpture turns out to be minimized and approached with much superficiality, as well as hinged around a bronze worker and wood carver rechristened master of marble, with a catalog of works based solely on the deductive attribution of the Martinengo Mausoleum and on nothing else. The consequences of Morassi's erroneous reworking are very heavy and take the form of a series of repercussions in the critical sphere. The first to fall into the misunderstanding is Gaetano Panazza who, in the 1958 catalog of the Brescia Civic Museums, found Olivieri's attribution of the Martinengo Mausoleum to be "satisfactory". Even in the fundamental History of Brescia, published by Treccani in 1963, the opportunity to definitively bring order to the historiography of the time was partially lost when Adriano Peroni kept unaltered Maffeo Olivieri's catalog and artistic role, based on Morassi's "well-founded critical reconstruction," which, moreover, was seen as a natural response to the gap concerning the artist's youthful years. Peroni's contribution, however, remains of the highest cultural depth, especially for having inaugurated a critical interpretation of the sculptural works capable of surpassing attributive issues, involving broader themes such as the reconstruction of the humanistic context within which the great construction sites of Renaissance Brescia occurred. In addition to Maffeo Olivieri, Peroni was nevertheless able to identify Gasparo Cairano and Tamagnino and attribute the documented works to them, although the relevance of what was attributed to Olivieri makes the latter member of the trio stand out clearly.

This preeminent position assumed by Maffeo Olivieri finally fell out of favor in 1977, when Camillo Boselli, in the Regesto artistico dei notai roganti in Brescia dall'anno 1500 all'anno 1560, the result of research in the notarial fund of the Brescia State Archives, in addition to partially reconstructing the Cairano family tree, published a series of documents fundamental to reconstructing the commission of the Martinengo Mausoleum, starting with the 1503 contract between Bernardino delle Croci and the brothers Francesco and Antonio II Martinengo of Padernello, with other subsequent documents up to 1516. The construction of the monument was thus backdated by almost twenty years, and the attribution to Maffeo Olivieri of it and all the other works attributed to him by Morassi, which on the authorship of the mausoleum were founded, fell down. On the contrary, in the second half of the 20th century, numerous documents emerged from civil and ecclesiastical archives confirming Maffeo Olivieri's activity as a wood carver, along with some works attributed to him with certainty. The question of Maffeo Olivieri as a marble artist was finally closed in 2010 by Vito Zani who, after a long discussion, concludes:

No one seems to have ever asked why, of this supposed Brescian protagonist of marble, not a single document or work has ever been found that could give the slightest plausible indication of his activity as a stonemason.

— Vito Zani, Gasparo Cairano, p. 85.

1980-90s: critical recognition

Palazzo della Loggia in Brescia.

The repercussion in critical circles of the discoveries published by Camillo Boselli in 1977, together with what was already known from the literature, made their first appearance in a series of volumes on different subjects published during the 1980s, in particular the monograph on the sanctuary of the Miracles edited by Antonio Fappani and Luciano Anelli in 1980 and the one on San Pietro in Oliveto by Father Stipi in 1985, while more specific in this sense is Valerio Terraroli's monograph on the two cathedrals of Brescia, from 1987, which became the occasion for a new critical reworking for the ark of St. Apollonius.

On the basis of the proceedings of the conference on Piazza della Loggia held by Ida Gianfranceschi in 1986, the large three-volume monograph on the Loggia and its square was published between 1993 and 1995, containing an essay by Giovanni Agosti specifically on the cycle of the Caesars that traces an innovative artistic profile of Gasparo Cairano starting from the reconsidered citation of Pomponius Gauricus and the humanistic milieu with which the sculptor had relations. Michiel's account of his brother Anzolino, active in Milan as a terracotta sculptor, was also recovered. The scholar then draws up a hypothetical catalog of his works, proposing in collaboration with Alessandro Bagnoli and Roberto Bartalini a distinction of authorship in the Caesars between Cairano and Tamagnino, still accepted by critics, and reconstructs for the first time the historiography of the Caprioli Adoration, attributed, however, to a more prudent "anonymous Lombard of the late fifteenth century." The opening of the Santa Giulia museum in 1998, on the other hand, was the occasion for the publication of a series of illustrative texts on the material included in the exhibition, including the Martinengo Mausoleum for which a number of important historical images have been released.

Studies and debates of the 21st century

Gasparo Cairano, Altar of Saint Jerome, Brawl of the Sea Gods (c. 1506-1510).

In two works published in 2001 and 2003, scholar Vito Zani proceeded to a reinterpretation of the sculptural landscape of Renaissance Brescia, relocating Maffeo Olivieri within the correct artistic context, mediated by the documents referred to him, and proposing Gasparo Cairano as the definitive protagonist of the Brescian artistic period, considered on a par with a "Brescian Amadeo." He was an enterprising contractor, active in public and private commissions, with a rapidly rising artistic career. In the two texts, Zani attributed to Gasparo Cairano the works already generally accepted by critics, adding the Caprioli Adoration, as Meyer had already conjectured a century earlier, the stone parts of the Martinengo Mausoleum and a group of sculptures dispersed in museums and collections in Italy as well as abroad. Zani's proposal was quickly accepted by 21st-century art critics, first by Valerio Terraroli, who reported it in the volume Renaissance Lombardy. Art and Architecture in 2003, a volume that was widely circulated even outside Italy, a real launching text for the “emblematic figure of Gaspare Coirano da Milano.”

In 2010, the first monograph entirely dedicated to Gasparo Cairano was finally published by Vito Zani. The text, for the first time, sets out to entirely reconstruct the critical vicissitude of Brescian Renaissance sculpture through the centuries by devoting an entire chapter to it, preceded by a reconstruction of the Brescian artistic scene from the second half of the 15th century onward and followed by a third and final chapter in which the Brescian biographies of the sculptors recognized in the numerous sources consulted are traced, from Gasparo Cairano to Antonio della Porta, Antonio Mangiacavalli and the Sanmicheli. Zani's contribution proved to be fundamental mainly due to the publication of numerous unpublished documents, in particular the fundamental surveying of 1517, which fixes the sculptor's death to before this date, and the surveying of his son Simone dated 1534, which allowed the reconstruction of much of the genealogy subsequent to Gasparo. The greatest contribution, however, remains the reconstruction of the artist's catalog of works, in fact all the major works in stone in early 16th-century Brescia, with the exception of the ark of St. Titian and with the addition of erratic works scattered in museums and collections around the world, revealing a clear affinity with Gasparo Cairano's chisel. A summary of the historiographical line proposed by Vito Zani was also accepted in the monograph dedicated to Lombard sculpture between the 15th and 20th centuries edited by Valerio Terraroli in 2011, where he occupies the chapter on Brescian Renaissance sculpture.

Shortly thereafter, also in 2010, Giuseppe Sava published in “Arte Veneta” an article reconstructing the figure of Antonio Medaglia, the misunderstood architect of the church of San Pietro in Oliveto, proposing a catalog of his works including some figures of the altar of San Girolamo, which, therefore, would have been made in collaboration between Medaglia and Cairano. The scholar, in some passages of the article, also finds an opportunity to comment on what Vito Zani highlighted, repeatedly hinting that he does not fully agree with the proposed reconstruction. In 2012, however, Vito Zani had the opportunity to reply to the considerations expressed by Sava in the context of an article in the online journal Antiqua, accepting only partially what he reconstructed about Antonio Medaglia and defending in general his theses on Gasparo Cairano.

At a Florentine auction in 2011, a sculptural group depicting three crown-holding angels was presented, whose illustrative commentary in the auction catalog was edited by Marco Tanzi. The scholar, reasoning about the dating and stylistic placement of the work, made a number of significant criticisms of the reconstruction advanced in 2010 by Vito Zani of Gasparo Cairano's catalog and the sculptural landscape of Renaissance Brescia, without, however, following up on the issue in other publications. The following year, in 2012, Vito Zani responded to Tanzi by means of an article published in three parts by the online art magazine Antiqua: in the first part he revised, and in fact overturned, the attribution made by Tanzi for the Three Angels, while in the second part he rebutted the objections presented by the scholar in the auction catalog. In the third and final part, on the other hand, Vito Zani again addressed the issue of the Brescian sculptor's catalog, reiterating what had already been set out in 2010 and making use above all of a rich photographic apparatus on which to formulate the proper comparisons between the works he grouped under the single hand of Gasparo Cairano.

See also

• Gasparo Cairano
• Renaissance art in Bergamo and Brescia

Bibliography

Ancient sources (up to the 19th century)

On Brescian topics

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On other topics

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• Melani, Alfredo (1899a). "Il monumento di Marc'Antonio Martinengo della Pallata a Brescia" [The monument of Marc'Antonio Martinengo della Pallata in Brescia]. Arte e Storia (in Italian) (XVIII, 9–10).
• Morassi, Antonio (1936). "Per la ricostruzione di Maffeo Olivieri" [For Maffeo Olivieri's reconstruction]. Bollettino d'Arte (in Italian).
• Peroni, Adriano (1963). "L'architettura e la scultura nei secoli XV e XVI" [Architecture and sculpture in the 15th and 16th centuries]. Storia di Brescia [History of Brescia] (in Italian). Brescia: Treccani.
• Sava, Giuseppe (2010). "Antonio Medaglia "lapicida et architecto" tra Vicenza e la Lombardia: il cantiere di San Pietro in Oliveto a Brescia" [Antonio Medaglia “lapicida et architecto” between Vicenza and Lombardy: the site of San Pietro in Oliveto in Brescia]. Arte Veneta (in Italian) (67).
• Terraroli, Valerio (1987). "Itinerario della scultura rinascimentale nelle Cattedrali" [Itinerary of Renaissance Sculpture in Cathedrals]. Le cattedrali di Brescia [The cathedrals of Brescia] (in Italian). brescia: Grafo.
• Zani, Vito (2007). "Sulle tracce dei Sanmicheli a Brescia e Mantova, tra Quattro e Cinquecento" [On the trail of the Sanmicheli in Brescia and Mantua, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries]. Tullio Lombardo. Scultore e architetto nella cultura artistica veneziana del Rinascimento, atti del convegno [Tullio Lombardo. Sculptor and architect in the Venetian artistic culture of the Renaissance, conference proceedings] (in Italian). Venezia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

On other topics in Renaissance sculpture and culture

• Adorno, Pietro (1991). Il Verrocchio. Nuove proposte nella civiltà artistica del tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico [Verrocchio. New proposals in the artistic culture of the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent.] (in Italian). Firenze: Edam.
• Bode, Wilhelm (1906). Die italienische Bronzestatuetten der Renaissance [Italian bronze statuettes of the Renaissance] (in German). Berlino.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Brentano, Carrol (1989). "Della Porta, Antonio, detto Tamagnino" [Della Porta, Antonio, known as Tamagnino]. Dizionario biografico degli italiani [Biographical Dictionary of Italians] (in Italian). Vol. 37 (voce). Roma: Treccani.
• Burnett, Andrew M.; Schofield, Richard V. (1997). "The Medallions of the Basamento of the Certosa di Pavia. Sources and Influence". Arte Lombarda (120).
• Caglioti, Francesco (2008). "Fifteenth-century reliefs of ancient emperors and empresses in Florence: production and collecting". Collecting sculpture in early modern Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Cicognara, Leopoldo (1823). Storia della scultura [History of sculpture].
• Ferrari, M.; Zanata, I. (1991). "La cappella del "Sangue de Christo" nella cattedrale di Mantova" [The chapel of the "Blood of Christ" in the cathedral of Mantua]. Storia e arte religiosa a Mantova. Visite di Pontefici e la reliquia del Preziosissimo Sangue [History and religious art in Mantua. Visits of Pontiffs and the Relic of the Precious Blood.] (in Italian). Mantova: Casa del Mantegna.
• Fittschen, Klaus (1985). "Sul ruolo del ritratto antico nell'arte italiana" [On the role of the ancient portrait in Italian art]. Memoria dell'antico nell'arte italiana [Memory of the ancient in Italian art] (in Italian). Torino: Einaudi.
• Hill, George Francis (1923). A corpus of italian medals of the Renaissance before Cellini. Oxford.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Malaguzzi Valeri, Francesco (1904). Gio. Antonio Amadeo. Scultore e architetto lombardo /1447-1522) [Gio. Antonio Amadeo. Lombard sculptor and architect /1447-1522)] (in Italian). Bergamo.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Melani, Alfredo (1899b). Dell'ornamento nell'architettura [About ornament in architecture] (in Italian). Milano.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Meyer, Alfred Gotthold (1900). Oberitalienische Frührenaissance. Bauten und Bildwerke der Lombardei [Early Renaissance in Northern Italy. Buildings and sculptures in Lombardy] (in German). Berlino.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Merzario, Giuseppe (1893). I maestri comacini [The masters from Como] (in Italian). Milano.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Nicodemi, Giorgio (1925). Il Bambaia [Bambaia] (in Italian). Gallarate.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Planiscig, Leo (1921). Venezianische Bildhauer der Renaissance [Venetian sculptors of the Renaissance] (in German). Wien.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Schofield, Richard V.; Shell, James; Sironi, Grazioso, eds. (1989). Giovanni Antonio Amadeo. Documents. Como: New press Edizioni.
• Schofield, Richard V. (2002). "The Colleoni chapel and the creation of a local all'antica architectural style". Bramante milanese e l'architettura del Rinascimento lombardo [Milanese Bramante and the architecture of the Lombard Renaissance]. Venezia: Marsilio.
• Tanzi, Marco (2011). "Scultore lombardo (Bresciano?) tra Tamagnino e Coirano, 1500 circa. Tre angeli reggicorona. Scultura in marmo, cm 83x62x29." [Lombard sculptor (Brescian?) between Tamagnino and Coirano, c. 1500. Three crown-holding angels. Marble sculpture, 83x62x29 cm.]. Arredi, Mobili e Dipinti Antichi provenienti dalla famiglia Antinori-Buturlin e altre proprietà private [Antique furnishings, furniture and paintings from the Antinori-Buturlin family and other private properties] (in Italian). Firenze: catalogo della casa d'aste Pandolfini.
• Venturi, Adolto (1924). Storia dell'arte italiana [Italian art history].
• Vigezzi, Silvio (1929). La scultura lombarda del Cinquecento [Lombard sculpture of the sixteenth century] (in Italian). Milano.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

On other Brescian topics

• Brognoli, Paolo (1826). Nuova guida per la città di Brescia [New guidebook for the city of Brescia] (in Italian). Brescia.
• Cassa, Andrea (1882). S. Francesco. S. Maria dei Miracoli. La Loggia. Il Cimitero. Appunti [S. Francis. S. Maria dei Miracoli. The Loggia. The Cemetery. Notes] (in Italian). Brescia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Cocchetti, Carlo (1859). "Brescia e la sua Provincia" [Brescia and its Province]. Grande illustrazione del Lombardo-Veneto diretta da Cesare Cantù. Volume III. Storia e descrizione di Brescia, Cremona, Como e loro contorni [Great illustration of Lombardy-Veneto directed by Cesare Cantù. Volume III. History and description of Brescia, Cremona, Como and their surroundings.] (in Italian). Milano.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Corna Pellegrini, Alessandra (2011). Floriano Ferramola in Santa Maria del Carmine [Floriano Ferramola in Santa Maria del Carmine] (in Italian). Brescia: Tipografia Camuna.
• Fenaroli, Stefano (1877). Dizionario degli artisti bresciani [Dictionary of Brescian Artists] (in Italian). Brescia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Fisogni, Fiorenzo (2011). "Scultori e lapicidi a Brescia dal tardo classicismo cinquecentesco al rococò" [Sculptors and stone carvers in Brescia from late sixteenth-century classicism to rococo]. Scultura in Lombardia. Arti plastiche a Brescia e nel Bresciano dal XV al XX secolo [Sculpture in Lombardy. Plastic arts in Brescia and the Brescia area from the 15th to the 20th century.] (in Italian). Milano: Skira.
• Franchi, Monica, ed. (2002). Le pergamene dell'Archivio Capitolare. Catalogazione e regesti [The Parchments of the Chapter Archives. Cataloguing and Registries] (in Italian). Travagliato.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Gianfranceschi, Ida, ed. (1986). Piazza della Loggia. Una secolare vicenda al centro della storia urbana e civile di Brescia, atti del seminario didattico (Brescia, 1981-1982) [Piazza della Loggia. A centuries-old affair at the center of Brescia's urban and civil history, proceedings of the teaching seminar (Brescia, 1981-1982)] (in Italian). Brescia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Guerrini, Paolo (1926). "Iscrizioni delle chiese di Brescia. Chiesa e chiostri di San Francesco" [Inscriptions of the churches of Brescia. Church and cloisters of San Francesco]. Commentari dell'Ateneo di Brescia per l'Anno 1925 (in Italian).
• Mucchi, Anton Maria (1932). Il duomo di Salò [The cathedral of Salò] (in Italian). Bologna.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Nicodemi, Giorgio (1920). Brescia (in Italian). Bergamo.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Odorici, Federico (1853). Storie bresciane dai primi tempi fino all'età nostra narrate da Federico Odorici [Brescian stories from the earliest times to our age narrated by Federico Odorici] (in Italian). Brescia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Panazza, Gaetano (1958). I Civici Musei e la Pinacoteca di Brescia [The Civic Museums and Art Gallery of Brescia] (in Italian). Bergamo.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Rivetti, Luigi (1920). La chiesa parrocchiale di Chiari. Note di storia ed arte [The parish church of Chiari. Notes on history and art] (in Italian). Chiari.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Sala, Alessandro (1834). Pitture ed altri oggetti di belle arti in Brescia [Paintings and other objects of fine arts in Brescia] (in Italian). Brescia.
• Stipi, Lorenzo Dionisio (1985). Invito a San Pietro in Oliveto. Storia, tradizione, arte, leggenda, folclore [Invitation to San Pietro in Oliveto. History, tradition, art, legend, folklore.] (in Italian). Brescia: Moretto.
• Terraroli, Valerio (1999). Luigi Arcioni. Progetti e restauri a Brescia tra Ottocento e Novecento [Luigi Arcioni. Projects and restorations in Brescia between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.] (in Italian). Brescia: Musei civici di arte e storia di Brescia.
• Treccani, Gian Paolo (1988). Questioni di "patrii monumenti". Tutela e restauro a Brescia [Issues of "heritage monuments". Protection and restoration in Brescia] (in Italian). Brescia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Ugoletti, Antonio (1909). Brescia (in Italian). Bergamo.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

On other topics

• Morassi, Antonio (1939). Catalogo delle cose d'arte e d'antichità d'Italia. Brescia [Catalog of the things of art and antiquities of Italy. Brescia] (in Italian). Roma.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Papaleoni, Giuseppe (1890). Le chiese di Condino prima del 1550 [The churches of Condino before 1550] (in Italian). Trento.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Passamani, Bruno, ed. (1978). Restauri ed acquisizioni 1973-1978 [Restorations and acquisitions 1973-1978] (in Italian). catalogo della mostra, Trento.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Picenardi, Giuseppe (1820). Nuova guida di Cremona per gli amatori dell'arti del disegno [New Cremona guide for lovers of the drawing arts] (in Italian). Cremona.
• Selvatico, Pietro (1847). Sulla scultura e sulla architettura in Venezia dal Medio Evo sino ai giorni nostri [On sculpture and architecture in Venice from the Middle Ages to the present day] (in Italian). Venezia.
• Schlosser, Julius von (1924). La letteratura artistica. Manuale delle fonti della storia dell'arte moderna [Art literature. Handbook of the sources of modern art history] (in Italian).