Fiorentino, Rosso

(Giovanni Battista di Jacopo; 1495-1540)

   Italian Mannerist painter; called Rosso (red) by his contemporaries for his red hair. Rosso Fiorentino was the pupil of Andrea del Sarto and a close friend of his fellow student Jacopo da Pontormo, the two becoming the leading masters of the Mannerist movement. The Descent from the Cross (1521; Volterra, Pinacoteca) Rosso painted for the Cathedral of Volterra in fact relates to Pontormo's version in the Capponi Chapel in the Church of Santa Felicita, Florence (1525-1528), in that it too features an oval composition with a void in the center and includes figures in extreme anguish. Particular to Rosso's style is the harsh lighting dividing the figures' anatomy and drapery into facets. Like all Mannerists, Rosso looked to Michelangelo for inspiration. The pose of his dead Christ in this painting is based on Michelangelo's Pietà (1498-1499/1500) at the Vatican. Further, Rosso's Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro (c. 1523; Florence, Uffizi) borrows from Michelangelo's Brazen Serpent on the Sistine ceiling, Vatican (1508-1512). This scene depicts a group of Midianite shepherds taking the water the daughters of Jethro drew from a well to give to their flock. Moses, who witnesses their transgression, drives the Midianites away and recovers the water, an action that results in his marriage to Zipporah, one of Jethro's daughters. The painting shows the scene from an unusual viewpoint. Michelangelesque nude males in contorted poses jut out at the viewer, some cropped by the frame—anticlassical elements that mark the work as Mannerist.

   In 1523, Rosso moved to Rome, but was forced to flee in 1527 due to the sack by imperial forces. To this period belongs his Dead Christ with Angels (1525-1526; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), painted for the Florentine bishop Leonardo Tornabuoni, which borrows its composition from Michelangelo's Florentine Pietà (c. 1550; Florence, Museo dell' Opera del Duomo) and abandons Rosso's earlier facetted forms and harsh tonalities and lighting. After wandering through Umbria and Tuscany for some time, Rosso finally settled in France in 1530 where he worked for Francis I in the Palace of Fontainebleau. There, along with Francesco Primaticcio, he founded the Fontainebleau School, a French version of Italian Mannerism.