Novità su Francesco Bellone, copista e scultore nella Milano di Federico Borromeo

In the light of new research, the present article re-examines the career of the Milanese artist Francesco Bellone (12 August 1589-before 1631), whose activity mainly as a copyist should be considered in relation to the work of Gaudenzio Ferrari, characteristic of Lombardy and eastern Piedmont between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the following century. The earliest references to Bellone date from the end of the second decade of the 17th century and document his activity as an expert copyist, being hired even by the archbishop of Milan Federico Borromeo to execute replicas from Bernardino Luini. In the early 1620s Bellone was active in the church of San Barnaba in Milan, working on the execution of seven copies from Gaudenzio Ferrari, an artist admired not only by the knight of Saint Stephen, Marco Antonio Della Croce, the probable commissioner of these replicas, but also by the Barnabite fathers, always attentive to the dignity and seemliness of sacred images in conformity with post-Tridentine doctrine. Of the seven paintings – deriving from Gaudenzi's frescoes in San Cristoforo at Vercelli and from the 'Compianto' of the Galleria Sabauda in Turin – today only the replica of the 'Compianto' remains, in a vestibule adjoining the sacristy. The four copies that formed a cycle destined for the presbytery have not in fact been found, while the two copies formerly in the chapel of San Giovanni Battista can be identified as the canvases transferred to the Barnabite church of Sant'Alessandro in Zebedia in Milan in the second half of the 18th century.