PROSPERO

FONTANA (1512-1597)  , Italian painter, was born in Bologna, and became a pupil of Innocenzo da Imola . He afterwards worked for Vasari and Perino del Vaga . It was probably from Vasari that Fontana acquired a practice of off-hand, self-displaying work . He undertook a multitude of commissions, and was so rapid, that he painted, it is said, in a few weeks an entire hall in the Vitelli palace at Citta di Castello . Along with daring, he had fertility of combination, and in works of parade he attained a certain measure of success, although his drawing was incorrect and his mannerism palpable . He belongs to the degenerate period of the Bolognese school, under the influence chiefly of the imitators of Raphael—Sabbatini, Sammachini and Passerotti being three of his principal colleagues . His soundest successes were in portraiture, in which branch of art he stood so high that towards 1550 Michelangelo introduced him to Pope Julius III. as a portrait-painter; and he was pensioned by this pope, and remained at the pontifical court with the three successors of Julius . Here he lived on a grand scale, and figured as a sort of arbiter and oracle among his professional brethren . Returning to Bologna, after doing some work in Fontainebleau and in Genoa, he opened a school of art, in which he became the preceptor of Lodovico and Agostino Caracci; but these pupils, standing forth as reformers and innovators, finally extinguished the academy and the vogue of Fontana . His subjects were in the way of sacred and profane history and of fable . He has left a large quantity of work in Bologna,—the picture of the " Adoration of the Magi," in the church of S . Maria delle Grazie, being considered his masterpiece —not unlike the style of Paul Veronese .

He died in

Rome in 1597 .