Giovanni Angelo del Maino
Giovanni Angelo del Maino was an Italian sculptor in wood. His works include the Ancona dell'Assunta.
Life and works
He and his brother Tiburzio were sons of Giacomo del Maino, magister a lignamine, who headed one of the main sacred woodwork workshops in Milan, in which they were trained. Giovanni soon absorbed the many technical skills required to create the vast array of sacred furnishings required of woodcarvers and inherited from his father a vigorously expressive artistic language, somewhat harsh and cutting, not without Northern European influences. Giacomo decided to move his workshop to Pavia, perhaps attracted by the important commissions for the decorations of the Certosa thanks to his contacts with Amadeo.In 1496 Tiburzio and Giovanni were both registered for the first time in Pavia as master woodworkers. At that date Giacomo continued to manage the workshop: the first works in which Giovan Angelo's greater artistic talent can be observed are the result of a close collaboration with his father, as for example in the imposing Santo Stefano Altarpiece in the Basilica of San Michele Maggiore in Pavia and in the Crucifix in the Collegiate Church of San Giovanni Battista in Castel San Giovanni.
Soon, however, the young Giovanni began to seek independence and found himself measuring himself against the appreciated innovations of Lombard classicism, especially the sculptures of Briosco and Bambaja. Evidence of a now-renewed style, softer and more attentive to detail – almost as if he wished to compete with works in marble – can be found in the relief of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ now in Berlin; then in the Nativity in the collegiate church of San Martino and Santa Maria Assunta in Treviglio, from about the same time as the fragmentary Crucifixion in the parish church of Albate, and in Como Cathedral from the exuberant decorative apparatus of the 1514 Sant'Abbondio Altarpiece and of the 1515 Crucifix Altarpiece. The adoption of sumptuous grotesque decorations in the 1515 work fits tastes in Rome at the time and leads some to suggest Giovanni went there; no surviving documents support this and grotesques already featured in many paintings of the time, such as ones by Stefano Scotto and Gaudenzio Ferrari.
The altarpiece at Como Cathedral must have brought great prestige and fame to Giovanni's workshop; his brother Tiburzio also worked there. Many works are the result of collaboration between the two brothers, with their hands distinguishable from each other. For example, a Lamentation was created by their workshop around 1510 and is located in the church of Santa Marta in Bellano. The brothers' workshop became the main point of reference for wooden sculpture throughout the Duchy of Milan.
The most important works from Giovanni's later phase include:
- The Assumption Altarpiece, gilded and painted by Gaudenzio Ferrari and Fermo Stella
- Betrothal of the Virgin, relief, possibly originally part of the altarpiece for the Santuario della Madonna di Tirano in Tirano
- Crucifixion, altarpiece, atop a carved predella with scenes of the Nativity from Piacenza, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- Altarpiece for the church of San Lorenzo in Ardenno