GAROFALO

born 1481 died 1559 byname of Benvenuto Tisi Italian painter who was the most prolific 16th-century painter of the Ferrarese school. Garofalo's first apprenticeship was with Domenico Panetti. The Cremonese painter Boccaccio Boccaccino and Garofalo's two visits to Rome in the first and second decades of the century influenced his work, as did the work of Dosso Dossi, especially in the treatment of landscape backgrounds. This is clearest in several pictures of the Nativity painted before 1520; it is also apparent in the fine Sacrifice to Ceres (1526; National Gallery, London). Northern Italian influences, particularly from Andrea Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi (Wedding Chamber) at Mantua, dominate Garofalo's ceiling paintings in the Seminario at Ferrara (1519). The influence of Raphael and Michelangelo made itself felt from about 1520 onward, and Garofalo, though he seems never to have left Ferrara at this time, kept pace with the developments of Michelangelesque Mannerism in Florence and Rome. This is evident in his painting the Baptist Taking Leave of His Father (1542) in San Salvatore, Bologna.