La Vierge au voile, by Raffaello Sanzio, from C2RMF retouched

Gianfrancesco Penni (1488/1496–1528), also known as Giovan Francesco, was an Italian painter. His brother Bartolommeo was an artist of the Tudor court of Henry VIII, and another brother,

Luca The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the most recent population from which all organisms now living on Earth share common descent—the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. This includes all cellular organisms; th ...

, ended up as one of the Italian artists of the

School of Fontainebleau The School of Fontainbleau (french: École de Fontainebleau) (c. 1530 – c. 1610) refers to two periods of artistic production in France during the late Renaissance centered on the royal Palace of Fontainebleau that were crucial in forming the No ...

.Luca Penni
Getty Museum website.

Life

Born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

to a family of weavers, Penni entered

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual a ...

's workshop very early in his life, and collaborated with him on several works, including the famous

Rooms In a building or large vehicle, like a ship, a room is any enclosed space within a number of walls to which entry is possible only via a door or other dividing structure that connects it to either a passageway, another room, or the outdoors, that ...

of the

Vatican Palace The Apostolic Palace ( la, Palatium Apostolicum; it, Palazzo Apostolico) is the official residence of the pope, the head of the Catholic Church, located in Vatican City. It is also known as the Papal Palace, the Palace of the Vatican and the V ...

, as well as the frescoes of

Villa Farnesina The Villa Farnesina is a Renaissance suburban villa in the Via della Lungara, in the district of Trastevere in Rome, central Italy. Description The villa was built for Agostino Chigi, a rich Sienese banker and the treasurer of Pope Julius II. B ...

, both in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

Heinrich Wölfflin Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in ar ...

and some other writers credited him with the entire execution of the

Raphael Cartoons The Raphael Cartoons are seven large cartoons for tapestries, belonging to the British Royal Collection but since 1865 on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, designed by the High Renaissance painter Raphael in 1515–16 and show ...

, with Raphael only creating the initial design, though more recent writers believe Raphael did much of the work himself. After the premature death of Raphael, Penni collaborated with

Giulio Romano Giulio Romano (, ; – 1 November 1546), is the acquired name of Giulio Pippi, who was an Italian painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the sixteenth-cent ...

to the completion of works such as the Hall of Constantine, the '' Transfiguration'', the ''Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin'' (1525) in Monteluce, and the

Palazzo Te or is a palace in the suburbs of Mantua, Italy. It is a fine example of the mannerist style of architecture, and the acknowledged masterpiece of Giulio Romano. Although formed in Italian, the usual name in English of Palazzo del Te is not that ...

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

. Penni also provided designs for the tapestries of the ''life of Christ'' for

Clement VII Pope Clement VII ( la, Clemens VII; it, Clemente VII; born Giulio de' Medici; 26 May 1478 – 25 September 1534) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 November 1523 to his death on 25 September 1534. Deemed "the ...

for the decoration of the '' Sala del Concistoro'' in the

Vatican Vatican may refer to: Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum The Holy See * The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...

. In 1526, he left Rome and joined back up with Giulio Romano, who had arrived in Mantua in 1524. According to Vasari, he was not well received in Mantua (though he did work with Romano on the frescoes at the

) and so soon began a long journey to Naples via Lombardy and Rome. He died in Naples in 1528. His pupils included Leonardo da Pistoia (Grazia).

Notes

;Attribution *

References

* * Freedberg, S. J. (1993). ''Painting in Italy, 1500–1600''. The Pelican History of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press.

External links

"Giovan Francesco Penni"
''Artcyclopedia'' 15th-century births 1528 deaths Italian Renaissance painters 15th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 16th-century Italian painters Painters from Florence {{Italy-painter-15thC-stub