Tisi, Benvenuto

, called IL Garofalo, an Italian artist, was born at Ferrara in 1481. He left his masters at Ferrara and Cremona, to go to Home, where he entered the school of Raphael. He imitated his design, the character of his faces, the expression, and much of his colour, though he added something of a more inflamed and stronger cast derived from the Ferrarese school. His pictures of evangelic subjects abound at Home, Bologna, and other cities of Italy; they are of different merit, and not painted all by him. His large pictures, many of which are in the Chigi gallery, are more genuine and more singular. The visitation of Mary in the palace Doria, is one of the master-pieces in the collection. Tisi used to mark his pictures with a painted violet, which the vulgar in Italy call Garofalo, a flower allusive to his name. It does not appear from Vasari, and others, that Garofalo had any share in the works which were executed by the scholars of Raphael under his direction. He returned to Ferrara, and became the head of that school, and died there in 1559, aged seventy-eight. ¹