Giovanni di Franza (1 gen 1420 anni – 31 dic 1467 anni)

Descrizione:

Giovanni di Francia ("di Franza") was born in Metz (Lorraine) around 1420, to an Italian father named Desiderio, originally from Fanna del Friuli. Back in Italy, his father kept a barber shop in Spilimbergo and initiated his son into art, under the guidance of local masters. We know that Giovanni di Franza subsequently resided and worked in San Daniele del Friuli (1449), in Pordenone (1456), in Udine (1465), where he was apprenticed by the Tolmezzino Domenico Mioni, who became the most illustrious engraver of his time . On 13 March 1462 he obtained the citizenship of Conegliano (De Mas, 1972), where he lived until 1467, the year in which he made his will and died.

It is known that he had two sons: Nicola, who embraced the ecclesiastical state, and DESIDERIO. a daughter was married to a Treviso apothecary. The total lack of news of the artist in the five-year period 1450-55; the appellation "from Feltre", given to his son D. and his various friendships with people from Feltre, led to the assumption that, in the five-year period of biographical silence, Giovanni di Francia had stayed in the Feltre area, where noteworthy cycles of frescoes exist in various churches that recent criticism attributes to him. Researches, conducted for the purpose of ascertaining this supposition, have led to the discovery that in the sec. XVI there was a Francia family, who lived and owned land in the territory of Rasai (Municipality of Seren del Grappa, near Feltre). This generic indication, during the research, it was validated by two deeds by Belluno notaries Pietro and Bernardino Argenta. The first, dated 19 Feb. 1485, certifies that "ser Desiderius q. Ioannis pictoris de Conegliano" had credits against a certain Santini; the second, on 26 Jan. 1486, that "Desiderius q. magistri Ioannis pictoris de Franza, ad praesens habitatoris Conegliani", sold a plot of land in the rule of Formegan, in the Feltre area. From these deeds it explicitly appears that D., twenty years after his father's death, still maintained relationships of interest and owned land in the Feltre area, where the parent had stayed and where probably he himself was born. boasted credits against a certain Santini; the second, on 26 Jan. 1486, that "Desiderius q. magistri Ioannis pictoris de Franza, ad praesens habitatoris Conegliani", sold a plot of land in the rule of Formegan, in the Feltre area. From these deeds it explicitly appears that D., twenty years after his father's death, still maintained relationships of interest and owned land in the Feltre area, where the parent had stayed and where probably he himself was born. boasted credits against a certain Santini; the second, on 26 Jan. 1486, that "Desiderius q. magistri Ioannis pictoris de Franza, ad praesens habitatoris Conegliani", sold a plot of land in the rule of Formegan, in the Feltre area. From these deeds it explicitly appears that D., twenty years after his father's death, still maintained relationships of interest and owned land in the Feltre area, where the parent had stayed and where probably he himself was born.

The indicated date of birth of D. is confirmed in a deed of July 1467, preserved in the bishopric archive of Vittorio Veneto, deed in which it is stated that the brothers Nicola and D., sons "magistri Ioannis pictoris q. Desiderii de civitate Methis de Lorraine province France", received the tonsure. Since the age prescribed by the canons for conferring the tonsure could not be less than 15 years, D. must have reached or slightly exceeded them in that year. It is logical to believe that he received the first rudiments of the art from his father himself, and that, when he died in 1467, the fifteen-year-old boy went to the school of some other artist of the time. The only possible master would seem to have been Dario di Giovanni (from Treviso), the bizarre "pictor vagabundus", pupil of the Paduan F. Squarcione. According to the methods of the time, Dario concentrated on painting the facades of houses and palaces, with tapestries interspersed with figures, still in a Gothic-like taste and hasty and somewhat coarse workmanship. In 1469 he painted the facade of the Raccola-Troyer palace in Serravalle (Vittorio Veneto), having as collaborator, according to Botteon-Aliprandi (1893), the young Desiderio. Indeed, it seems that the motto "Desiderium impiorum peribit", traced on the facade of this building, was an allusion to the name of the collaborator scholar. D. probably also intervened in the facade of Palazzo Montalban-Raccola in Conegliano, signed by Dario and dated 1474. Nothing therefore validly contrasts with the hypothesis of Dario da Treviso master of D., whose art, gothic-like and also somewhat naive and latecomer, is affected by the model of the "

In the years around 1490, another painter from Feltre worked in Conegliano, Iacopo Collet di Arten, already assistant to Iacopo da Montagnana when the latter in 1480 frescoed the Caminada palace and the Cesa chapel in the church of S. Stefano in Belluno. D. and Collet, in 1491, were commissioned to fresco the walls and vaults of the Conegliano church of S. Maria Annunziata dei Battuti (later the city cathedral); the work was already completed in 1493.

The frescoes, whitewashed during one of the recurring plagues of the following ages (perhaps in the most serious one of 1630), were discovered during the cleaning work of the cathedral in 1956. On two pillars you can see the figures of the martyrs S . Stephen and S. _ Lorenzo , and in the vaults, in the ribs, in the soffits of the arches and in the double frieze of the external portico, a large decoration with fake tapestries, in the manner mentioned by Dario da Treviso, with floral motifs, satyrs, cherubs, grotesques, etc.

The martyrs Stefano and Lorenzo , represented standing and frontally, within rectangular niches with classical friezes (the first with his hands joined in the act of prayer and the other with the palm of martyrdom), are neither rough nor handcrafted figures, although not presenting particular qualities of expression and execution. The decoration, on the other hand, which is rich, varied and, overall, pleasant, shows that this was the field in which the genius of the two painters was best expressed.

Of the remaining activity of D., no trace remains, nor are the place and date of his death known.

Sources and Bibl .: Belluno, Arch. notary, Protocols notary Pietro Argenta , 1478-1488, c. 90rv; Ibid., Protocols notary Bernardino Argenta , 1477-1490, fol. 112v-113r; V. Botteon-A. Aliprandi, Research into the life and works of Cima da Conegliano , Conegliano 1893, pp. 36 s.; V. Botteon, Congregation of Charity of Conegliano , Conegliano 1904, pp. 11 no. 24, 112; G. Marchetti-G. Nicoletti, Wooden sculpture in Friuli ..., Milan 1956, p. 45 and passim ; G. Fiocco-L. Menegazzi, The Cathedral of Conegliano , Conegliano 1965, pp. 65, 90, 100; G. Biasuz, News about the painters Bonin , Collet and D .from Feltre , in Arch . hiss . of Belluno, Feltre and Cadore , XXXVIII (1967), 181, pp. 127-132; A. De Mas, Conegliano . Art, history and life , Conegliano 1972, p. 104; G. Biasuz, A new paper on D . from Feltre , ibid ., XLVI (1976), 217, pp. 131-134; S. Claut, The frescoes of Rasai and Pedesalto by Giovanni di Francia , in L'Amico del popolo , 16 Feb. 1978.

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