SABATINI, Lorenzo
Italian painter. His early education is linked to the Maniera of Pellegrino Tibaldi, Niccolò dell’Abate and Prospero Fontana, who was probably his teacher and collaborator. His chief characteristics as a painter are a Tusco-Roman plasticity derived from Vasari and a lively Emilian mannerism absorbed through the study of Parmigianino. The most important work from his controversial early career is the Last Supper (San Girolamo alla Certosa, Bologna), which must have functioned almost as a pendant to another painting, the (untraced) Marriage at Cana, known through a print by Cornelis Cort. Both appear to date from the 1560s. The fresco depicting Artemisia (Palazzo Poggi, Bologna), the Holy Family with Saints (San Egidio, Bologna) and the canvas of Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1562; Banca del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, Bologna) have also been assigned to this early period.
In 1565 Lorenzo was registered at the Florentine Accademia del Disegno and in that year he executed six Virtues for the Ricetto (vestibule off the Sala dei Cinquecento) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, in a style that is strongly dependent upon Vasari. In 1566 he participated in the decorative preparations for the wedding of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Joanna of Austria. A rare signed work also belongs to this period, the Virgin and Child with a Citron (private collection). Between 1566 and 1573 he produced a number of works in Bologna: the Dispute of St Catherine (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna), which makes numerous references to Tuscan tradition, the frescoes (1569; destroyed) in the apse of San Clemente, Collegio di Spagna, Bologna, and probably the untraced altarpiece from the same church depicting St Peter Handing the Keys to St Clement with SS James the Greater, Jerome, Lawrence and Stephen.
Between 1566 and 1570 he decorated the Malvasia Chapel, San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna, painting frescoes of the Doctors of the Church and the Evangelists and, with Denys Calvaert, an altarpiece canvas of the Virgin and Child with St Michael. The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Saints (c. 1570) demonstrates a continuing interest in a rigorous classicism derived from Raphael. Finally, Vasari’s late mannerist formulae are the source for the signed and dated Virgin and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (1572; Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Christ in Glory with Sts Louis of France, Bartholomew and Anthony of Padua (Museo San Domenico, Bologna).
