Artibus et Historiae no. 80 (XL)
2019, ISSN 0391-9064Up
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MASSIMO FERRETTI - An Investigation of Benedetto Diana (pp. 72–93)
Benedetto Diana is here proposed as the author of the Six Saints in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, a work from the Lochis collection. Formerly bearing an authoritative attribution to Carpaccio, the painting has also been connected with a variety of different areas of the Venetian terraferma. The present proposal is based partly on considerations of chronology: that of the artist himself, despite difficulties in tracing this; and also that of Venetian painting in general in the transitional period from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century. But the new attribution also helps confirm that Diana’s artistic culture was not exclusively rooted in metropolitan Venice. Finally, the return of the painting to its original triptych format during recent conservation, and the existence of the false nineteenth-century signature of Cima da Conegliano, provide the occasion for some observations regarding the history of restoration and collecting in Lombardy.