Giovanni Francesco Bezzi called Il Nosadella

Bio

Nosadella is a rather mysterious figure; even Malvasia , his biographer, to whom we owe the bulk of our knowledge of the artist, wrote that there was ‘not. . . much to say’ about him. Nosadella was evidently primarily a fresco painter in the palazzi of the Bolognese patriciate. Malvasia refers to only two paintings by him that survive: the Madonna and Child with the Blessed Raniero and other Saints in the Oratorio di S. Maria della Vita, Bologna, and The Circumcision, S. Maria Maggiore, Bologna. However, the latter painting was completed by Prospero Fontana. Malvasia says that Nosadella was the student of Pellegrino Tibaldi and that his works ‘are distinguished by good colour, like his master, and are full of erudition. And if they are not as perfect and studied, they are perhaps more awesome, singular and resolute’.

In modern times, Voss was the first to attempt to reconstruct Nosadella’s work. His proposals were postulated on the basis of a style that was conceived as a highly personal departure from Tibaldi’s Bolognese Palazzo Poggi frescoes. Voss’s hypotheses were rather skeptically received, and most scholars have returned several of his candidates to Tibaldi’s oeuvre. A reaction followed, led by Bologna, who was inclined to attribute any ‘Tibaldi-esque’ pictures to that master. It is only in recent years, with the emergence of a remarkable group of new paintings, several of which have gone to American museums, such as The Annunciation, Princeton, University Art Gallery; The Presentation of Christ, Oberlin, Allen Memorial Art Museum, and The Holy Family with Female Saints, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, that a reasonable understanding of Nosadella’s art has emerged. Winkelmann proposes that Nosadella’s earlier work shows the impact of Raphael and Polidoro and that he must have visited Rome. The current understanding of Nosadella is that he was one of the most original and individual artists of Bolognese Mannerism, and it is quite possible, despite the tradition that he was Tibaldi’s pupil, that Nosadella might actually have exerted a strong influence on this better known artist.