Bartolomeo Passerotti (Passarotti)
Place Born
BolognaPlace Died
BolognaBio
According to Raffaello Borghini, Passerotti went to Rome as a student of the architect Jacopo Vignola, who in 1545 had presented Paul III with a design for the façade of San Petronio in Bologna and in 1550 was put in charge of the Farnese pope’s tomb. A document records Passerotti’s presence in Rome in 1551. He is said to have worked with Taddeo Zuccaro, after whose drawings he made a number of etchings. Whether or not Passerotti may have been involved, as was Taddeo, with commissions for the newly-elected Pope Julius III, former papal legate to Bologna, is not clear. His compatriots Vignola and Prospero Fontana, however, were instrumental in the construction and decoration of the Villa Giulia.
It was in Rome that Passerotti’s activity as a portrait painter began, and he was to return there to execute portraits of Pius V (1566-1572), Gregory XIII (1572-1585), and members of their courts. His son Tiburzio was born in Bologna, however, c. 1555, and in 1560 Pietro Lamo referred to his studio in the vicinity of the Torre degli Asinelli, where he had seen drawings, sculpture, and a painting of The Magdalen in the Wilderness by Parmigianino. Passerottis Purification of the Virgin in Santa Maria Mascarella is referred to as an early work by Cesare Malvasia, whereas the San Giacomo altarpiece Virgin and Child with Saints Anthony Abbot, Nicolas of Tolentino, John the Baptist, Augustine, and Stephen, with Donors (1565) is a fully accomplished one, bearing his signature of a passaro or sparrow, in the lower left. Two other altarpieces of importance in Bologna are The Virgin Appearing to Saints Petronius and Peter Martyr in San Petronio and The Presentation of the Virgin (1583) from the chapel of the Gabela Grossa, or Customs Office. Passerotti held the office of Massaro dell’Arte on more than one occasion, and he was active in promoting the separation in 1569 of the painters from the guild of artisans in order to form their own company. Having four children, all of them artists, he conducted a school that was attended by Agostino Carracci (among others).
By the end of 1570, Passerotti had also established himself as a genre painter. The naturalism of his handling in works such as The Butcher’s Shop (Rome, Galleria Nazionale dell’Arte Antica) provided a precedent for Annibale Carracci’s own version in Oxford and influenced the younger painters attitude towards low-life types.