Amico Aspertini

(Bologna, 1474/1475-1552)

Among the artists working in Bologna between the 15th and 16th centuries, Arcangeli chose Amico Aspertini, placing him in the same line as Vitale da Bologna and Jacopini for his ability to tap into the most human, the most popular but also the most problematic core of life.

“Even when the new world of the Renaissance arrived in Bologna and, after the exceptional interlude of Ferrarese dominion, it settled and became regularised in the graceful, placidly open art of Francesco Francia. It was then that a new champion of local painting, Amico Aspertini, emerged in opposition to the somewhat lofty art in favour at the court of the Bentivoglio…”.

“Right from his early Roman years he had been uninterested in learning the secrets of the golden, harmonious classicism that fascinated Raphael. Indeed, he had imaginatively and polemically felt that world to be a ‘ruin’.

While he engaged with classicism, there prevailed in him a desire to twist its proportions (with an abuse analogous to what Wiligelmo had done long before), to see them eroded by time. The dust of centuries, perhaps even nostalgia, but the immediate affirmation that real life cannot be fixed in eternal canons…”.

“The splendid years of Leo X were in progress, but even before the poisonous snake of Mannerism began to bite in that harmonious body, the times had already given various signs of profound change.

The foundations of the seemingly perfect edifice creaked, and hidden currents stirred the depths of the serene waters. Aspertini was among those who spotted the crisis most profoundly, one of the most personal champions of an ‘anti-Renaissance’ that undermined any notion of certain dominion, contesting it with its free spirits…