Renaissance

The subalpine Renaissance was a tardy development in the 1500s, which faded out in the century that followed, when Late Mannerist forms were still present in the art of the Castellamontes and their Lugano associates. The Piedmontese were fond of the Gothic style, decorative sculpture and the brilliant painting of Jaquerio. The Staffarda choir (most of which is now in Turin’s Municipal Museum) reveals the shift from sublime Late-Gothic carving to the first precarious attempts at perspective. The extraordinary exception is Turin Cathedral, an opus imported from Tuscany thanks to a Settignano master, which features the typical double-order aedicule façade with side volutes also found in Rome’s Sant’Agostino and Santa Maria del Popolo. The same can be said of Santa Croce in Boscomarengo, while Saluzzo, Saliceto and Revello are more closely bound to the local area, where the atypical Leonardesque Hans Clemer worked. The Flemish artist was greater even than Gandolfino di Roreto and comparable to Macrino d’Alba, the most central Italian in style of his Piedmontese colleagues.