Giovanni Battista Franco
Italian, c. 1510 - 1561
His application to drawing seems to have led him to neglect colour. When he was commissioned in 1536 to paint four large frescoes at the Capuan Gate, through which the Emperor Charles V was due to enter the city, his inexperience with the brush was revealed by comparison with the work of some Dutch painters, who were skilled in chiaroscuro effects and had been engaged on the same task.
In the same year - 1536 - Vasari employed him as his assistant in decorating the residence of Ottaviano de' Medici in Florence. At around this time, he also painted a canvas of the Rape of Lucretia by Tarquinius Sextus. After the assassination of Duke Alessandro de' Medici in early 1537, Vasari left Florence, leaving Franco to complete the commissions he had accepted: a portrait of Alessandro's father, Pope Clement VII, and another of Ippolito de' Medici. He also painted an enlarged version of a cartoon by Michelangelo: Noli me tangere.
At the end of the same year, he was required to depict the battle won by Duke Cosimo I against the Florentine exiles. A curious feature of the painting is his introduction of Ganymede being carried off by Jupiter as an eagle, an idea borrowed from Michelangelo. When Cosimo married Eleanora de Toledo, Giovanni Battista was commissioned to paint a triumphal arch depicting the exploits of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, the duke's brother. Another work he painted, for the courtyard of Palazzo Medici, depicts Cosimo receiving the ducal insignia. Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (not to be confused with Domenico, who had died in 1498), with whom he had already collaborated, then took him to paint some frescoes of the life of Joseph for the cloister of a Camaldolese convent.
In 1541, he returned to Rome. Michelangelo had just completed his immense fresco of the Last Judgement and Franco was unable to rest until he had copied every last figure. His fellow Venetian, Cardinal Grimano, then asked him to decorate a loggia of his palazzo, close to St Peter's, with grotesques and arabesques. At the same time, he began a fresco painting of St John the Baptist Thrown into Prison. Vasari reports that spatial perspective was completely sacrificed to the details of musculature, arms, legs and torsos; seen individually, these features were perfectly drawn and modelled, but they did not hang together as a whole.
As a result of this failure, Franco decided to accept the invitation of Guidobaldo II to come to Urbino, where he was required to paint the main vault of the palace church with a scene of the Assumption of the Virgin. He set about drawing angels, saints, prophets, apostles and sibyls, inspired by his admiration for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but the result was another failed masterpiece. However, his skill in drawing gave the duke the idea of seconding the painter to his majolica factories of Urbino, Pesaro and Castel Durante. Majolica ware was then the height of fashion, recently introduced into Italy by Arab or Spanish craftsmen from Majorca. By replacing the lead glaze with a tin glaze, which gave a pure white background, it was possible to decorate earthenware in a more varied and artistically satisfying manner. The factories multiplied: as well as those already mentioned, majolica works were established in Faenza (1425), Gubbio (1480), Rovezzano, Rovigo, Bologna and Cetto di Castello. The most brilliant period lasted from 1520 to 1560, when Franco was active. The most celebrated ceramic artist, Georgio Andreoli (1498-1552) owned a factory at Gubbio. Franco supplied a large number of drawings to the duke's factories. He taught a number of pupils, including Orazio Fontana of Urbino (1520-1582) (by whom the Louvre owns a goblet depicting the Rape of Europa) and Raffaele del Colle. In the meanwhile, Franco was commissioned, in the place of Vasari, who was ill, to decorate the triumphal arches for the duke's marriage with Vittoria Farnese.
On returning to Rome in 1579, Franco began drawing antiquities with all his usual enthusiasm, intending to compile a collection (he was not unskilled as an engraver), when Andrea dell'Anguillea asked him to decorate the theatre he was founding in Rome. During the same period, he also painted the frescoes that can be seen in the church of S Maria sopra Minerva.
Returning to Venice, he executed many commissions, including a Diana and Acteon for the ceiling of St Mark's library. He was working on the Grimani Chapel, where a Baptism of Christ still survives, when he died in 1580.
Although his paintings are few, his drawings are legion. The Louvre alone owns 93 of them, but not a single painting.
"FRANCO, Giovanni Battista." In Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/benezit/B00067430 (accessed April 10, 2012).
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