GAMBARA, Lattanzio - b. 1530 Brescia, d. 1574 Brescia

Italian painter. It is generally agreed that he received his early training with Giulio Campi in Cremona, where he developed his style, derived from Lombard and Emilian Mannerism. In 1549 Gambara returned to Brescia, where he became an assistant to Girolamo Romanino and married the latter’s daughter in 1556. During the 1550s he collaborated with Romanino on the fresco cycles in the Averoldi and Bargnani palaces in Brescia, where he made some accommodation in his style to Romanino’s, though demonstrating his innate eclecticism. His first important independent commissions were the façade frescoes (c. 1557) on the Case del Gambero (Brescia). Here, Gambara fused the decorative elegance of Parmigianino and Camillo Boccaccino with the Michelangelesque qualities of Giulio Romano and Pordenone.

He was a prolific fresco painter and draughtsman, and after Romanino’s death in 1560 he became the leading artist in Brescia. In 1561 he frescoed four scenes from the Apocalypse in the Broletto Palace in Brescia (destroyed), which reflected strongly the influence of Giulio Romano. This is true also of his Nativity (c. 1561-68; Brescia, Santi Faustino e Giovità), where an academic dryness begins to appear. From 1567 to 1573 Gambara was engaged in frescoing the nave arcade and internal façade of Parma Cathedral together with the Cremonese painter Bernardino Gatti. These frescoes, as well as the contemporary frescoes in Cremona Cathedral, are in a turgid Mannerist style, filled with large figures and complicated foreshortening. He died while executing the vault frescoes in San Lorenzo, Brescia.

Ascension of Christ

Gambara’s Ascension of Christ is painted on the entry fa�ade of the cathedral of Parma.

In the Renaissance period the decoration of the church is frequently focused on the apse and the entrance wall. These terminal walls of extended interior spaces are visible from a great distance, catching visitors’ attention. The decoration of the apse towers over the events of mass at the high altar; the decoration of the inside wall of the fa�ade serves as an admonition or reinforcement for the visitors as they leave the liturgical ceremony and the church. Large format in both places called for fundamental, weighty themes.

Examples of large-scale painted apse recesses are common in the areas ruled by Venice but also in Emilia. A large-scale fresco in the apse vault or on an entrance fa�ade could appear to break open the surface of the wall to provide a vision of the heavens or a view of an historical event; alternatively, it could illusionistically extend the existing architecture and enliven it with holy figures.

The illusionistic remodeling, carried out by Lattanzio Gambara on the interior fa�ade of the Romanesque cathedral in Parma, is very spectacular. A fictive triumphal arch, decorated with reliefs and statues, stands at the end of the aisle.Above it, at the height of the galleries in the nave, the wall seems to recede into the depth. An illusionistic platform results on which Christ’s disciples are running about in agitation; Christ, depicted in an aureole of light, floats above an actual window that illuminates the space. The contrast with the rigid artistic world of the painted statues and reliefs makes the excited figures of the Ascension seem that much more real.