Antonio da Brescia

Under the name Antonio da Brescia , also Fra Antonio da Brescia , Pseudo Antonio da Brescia , (active between 1487 and 1514), art history summarizes a number of differently signed medals that apparently come from the same artist.

The starting point for identification with an artist named Antonio da Brescia is a series of signed medals with the monograms AB, FAB, FRA. ON. BRIX and the like can most plausibly be resolved into the names Francesco Antonio da Brescia or Fra Antonio da Brescia , which is now generally recognized. His works are not dated, but can usually be easily classified due to the people depicted. Accordingly, his earliest known work, a portrait medal of Albertino Papava di Padova, which is now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and was probably made in the year of death of the person pictured, dates from 1487. A portrait medal by Girolamo Saorgnan, which is in the Museo today Civico, kept in Brescia , cannot have been made before 1514 and is currently considered to be his latest known work. Judging by the origin of the people depicted, he worked in Brescia, Padua , Treviso , Venice and Verona , among others .

His portraits are characterized by their great closeness to reality and high plasticity. The backs of his medals are less well elaborated, with mostly allegorical depictions, which are solid but do not achieve the power of portraits.

Attempts have been made several times to identify Brescia with other Italian medalists, including the medalist from 1523 , who was not known by name and who was also active in Venice and whose works are stylistically very similar to those of Antonio da Brescia. Nevertheless, this attribution met with a majority of rejection. Other controversial attempts at attribution include equating Antonio da Brescia with the engraver Giovanni Antonio da Brescia , who was presumably active in Brescia between 1490 and 1525 and who is also said to have been a Carmelite (hence the frequently used form of address Fra before the name Antonio da Brescia), as well as between 1518 and in 1523 in Venice and Brescia medalist Francesco Antonio da Brescia .

Medals from Antonio da Brescia are now in Berlin ( Münzkabinett ), Brescia (Museo Civico), London ( The British Museum ), London ( Victoria and Albert Museum ), Milan (Pinacoteca di Brera), Paris ( Musée National du Louvre ), Washington ( National Gallery of Art ) and many other public and private collections.

literature

• Saur general artist lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples. = The artists of the world. Volume 4: Angelin - Ardon. Emphasis. Saur, Munich et al. 1992, ISBN 3-598-22744-2 , p. 367.