BENAGLIO, Francesco - b. ~1430 Verona, d. ~1492 Verona

Francesco Benaglio (Benalius), Italian painter, originally Francesco di Pietro della Biada. He adopted his professional name from a noble Bergamask family then living in Verona. His earliest documented work is the signed triptych of the Virgin and Child Enthroned Adored by St Bernard with SS Peter, Paul, Francis, Jerome, Louis of Toulouse and Anthony of Padua (1462; Verona, Castelvecchio), executed for S Bernardino, Verona. It is a relatively free copy after Mantegna’s San Zeno Altarpiece (Verona, San Zeno), although much more decorative in the details and less secure in the spatial arrangement of the saints.

Benaglio’s name regularly appears in the Veronese tax records from 1465 to 1482. In 1475, he and a painter named Martino were condemned to four months in prison for painting obscene figures on the façade of the Palazzo Sagramoso. In 1476 he finished a fresco of SS Bartholomew, Zeno, Jerome and Francis (destroyed 1738) in S Maria della Scala. In 1492 Benaglio’s son Girolamo is listed as an orphan, indicating that his father must have died that year.