ZENALE, Bernardo

Italian painter, member of Milan’s Scuola di San Luca painters’ guild by 1481. He spent most of his career in Milan working on collaborations with Bernardino Butinone for the churches between 1485 and 1493. His early influences were Ferrarese painters such as Ercole de’Roberti but after c. 1500, Zenale seemed to abandon the Ferrarese-expressionist style of Butinone, a strong influence from Leonardo da Vinci starting to appear in his works. This is manifest in the polyptych that he painted for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception of Cantù (1502). He was influenced also by Bernardino Luini’s style: works like the Pala Busti and the large Annunciation (both in the Pinacoteca di Brera) have indeed raised disputes about the attribution to Luini or Zenale.

By 1513, Zenale was focusing on architecture and was elected architect of the Milan Cathedral in 1519, becoming chief three years later, replacing Giovanni Antonio Amadeo. Zenale also wrote a treatise on perspective.