Giovanna Virgilio

For a long time, to give an author to the polyptych in the church of San Vincenzo, located in Gera Lario (1547), reference has been made to the typological and stylistic affinities with the one located in Cremeno, Valsassina (1534), which has been initially assigned to Sigismondo De Magistris. At a later date, the discovery of a document kept in the State Archive of Milan gave the opportunity to identify Ambrogio Arcimboldi as the author of the Cremeno altarpiece and to find out that he received the assignment together with De Magistris...

In the churches of Pognana – a picturesque village overlooking the Lario – there are valuable paintings and precious goldsmiths coming from central Europe. These are works commissioned to important representatives of Baroque painting, such as Januarius Zick, author of the canvas of Saint Joseph and Child (1766) located in the parish church of the Holy Trinity, and to illustrious exponents of the international Rococo, like Carlo Innocenzo Carloni who made, around 1745, the altarpiece with the Madonna and Child with saints Miro and Fedele of the church of San Miro...

A previously unknown painting by Filippo Abbiati for the Sanctuary of Madonna del Bosco in Imbersago The article analyzes a late-17th-Century painting recently discovered during the cataloguing of the assets of the Diocese of Milan, and originally displayed on the high altar of the Sanctuary of Madonna del Bosco in Imbersago. The painting depicts the miraculous apparition of the Virgin on May 9, 1617: while resting against a chestnut tree, the Madonna presents three burs to a group of shepherds kneeling at the bottom of the scene, next to an ox, a dog and some sheep. The extremely good quality of the work immediately suggested an attribution to an important master, later identified with Filippo Abbiati, who had worked here together with another painter, a specialist in the rendition of animals and plants. A validation to this hypothesis is given by the will of Alberico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, patron of a chapel in the Sanctuary, dated September 19, 1692, in which he endows a budget in favor of the high altar. The nobleman was actually a patron of Abbiati and another painter named “Merate”, a pupil of Tempesta. It was then possible to make inquiries about this artist, who could probably be identified with Giuseppe Merati, mentor of Tavella, the author of an interesting – yet virtually unknown – cycle of frescoes in the castle of Roncadelle (Brescia).

New Discoveries on Federico Ferrario in the Territory of Lecco GIOVANNA VIRGILIO The essay presents a series of new documents allowing to push back the beginning of Federico Ferrario’s activity. The career of this artist is usually structured in two distinct phases: the first (approximately 1750s and 1760s) characterized by a constant presence in the Milanese territory – with brief stays in Monza, Brianza, Orta, Lodi and even Piacenza –, the second (1760s- 1780s) by a frequent activity in the area around Bergamo. His earliest works, approximately dated 1752, were so far identified as those for the churches of San Filippo in Lodi and Sant’Angelo in Milan. Now, two previously unknown paintings in the parish church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Galbiate (Province of Lecco) push back the beginning of Ferrario’s career – which still presents some black spots, especially in the early stages – by a decade. The two pendants represent respectively, the Adoration of the Magi and the Last Supper, and they are already documented in 1742. The essay also introduces other artworks that could be attributed based on style to the Milanese painter, found in the territory comprised among Abbadia Lariana, Mandello del Lario and Lierna, on the East bank of the Lecco branch of Lake Como.