Andrea Boscoli (Florence 1560 – 1606) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.

He was born in Florence, where he trained under Santi di Tito. He painted a St. John preaching for the church of the Teresiani at Rimino. He also painted portraits. He died about 1606.

Biography
A pupil of Saints of Titus around 1575, according to Filippo Baldinucci: “he became a very practical imitator of the master’s manner so that perhaps some of his works would have been changed with those of him”.

His first known works are two circular drawings of a Triumph of Bacchus and a Silenus, dated 1582, respectively in Weimar and in the Uffizi which, as Baldinucci recalls: “To Carlo Davanzati he made two drawings in the round to carve into a saucer silver, where he depicted fables of Silenus and Bacchus which were considered very beautiful. ”

In the eighties he made a study trip to Rome, as evidenced by pen and watercolor drawings of ancient statues and friezes by Polidoro da Caravaggio, of a rapid and angular sign. To this decade belong the paintings, attributed to Il trionfo di Mardocheo of the LACMA of Los Angeles and the Wedding at Cana of the Uffizi, where the figures recall Santi di Tito and the taste of precious details belongs to the mannerist circle of the Medici painters.

In 1587 he frescoed a martyrdom of St. Bartholomew in the little cloister of San Pier Maggiore in Florence with mannerist figures in transparent colors and colored shadows.

In 1592-1593 he frescoed the Convivio of the gods at the Villa di Corliano in the Bagni di Pisa (San Giuliano Terme).

In 1593 he painted the Annunciation of the church of the Carmine of Pisa and the frescoes, partially destroyed in 1944, in the church of San Matteo; during this stay he designed some of Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes in the Camposanto; his other drawings derived from works by Correggio, Gambara, Tiziano and Muziano, testify to his travels to Parma, Genoa, Venice and Reggio Emilia.

In 1596 he painted the Miracle of St. Nicholas in the Florentine church of San Lorenzo alle Rose and the Visitation in that of Sant’Ambrogio, which recalls the homonymous altarpiece by Pontormo in Carignano in a counter-Reformation version, however, in the sumptuous devotion of the characters.

From 1600 it operates in the Marche, where it has the misfortune of being accused of espionage and imprisoned for a short time; in the monastery of San Luca di Fabriano he produces his masterpieces, an Annunciation, a Madonna and saints, a Nativity now in the local Pinacoteca and frescoes the vault of the Brefotrofio. In the Mannerist tradition of the region deriving from Zuccari and Barocci, he brings a composed and harmonious painting into the richness of light and color.

Follow the Circumcision of the Cathedral of Fermo, the ruined frescoes in the church of Santa Maria Piccinina, the Madonna and saints now in the Pinacoteca of Macerata and the Crucifixion of the Church of Santa Maria del Buon Gesù in Carassai, where it refers to the mannerist patetism of the Lillo.

He returned to Florence in 1606 and died here in early 1607.

Rating
In the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, a detached and transferred fresco on canvas, in the cloister of the oratory of San Pierino in Florence, transforms the tremendous slippage of the saint, which should be a devotional example for good Catholics, in a scene of indifferent curiosity: relegate martyrdom in the background and represents it with clear and transparent shades, putting a soldier in the foreground in a pompous pose at Zuccari, and three figures showing references to Pontormo.

The San Giovanni Evangelista resurrects Drusiana, a canvas preserved in the Johson Collection of Philadelphia, a pendant of a Miracle of St. Paul dispersed, attributed by Longhi to the Boscoli but in the catalog of the Collection to the Venetian Pietro Mariscalchi, “for the liquid brushstroke and the luministic preciousness … as well as for the direct way of kneading the shape with color … But the structure of the blended and mottled shadows is fundamentally drawing and typical of Boscoli, like … the simplicity of the story, more fabulous than sacred, populated by characters that unite the most accredited Florentine tradition … but anticipating the picturesque making of the next seventeenth century Florentine … “(Forlani).

In the Madonna and the saints Tommaso, Lorenzo and Francesco signed this pinse Andrea Boscoli from Florence in the year one thousand six hundred and four, adopts a spacious and festive composition, for which we wanted to see references to the Carraccis, with a chromatic choice that consciously dates back to the Barocci.

If in his early youth he was naturally close to the master Santi di Tito, he built an autonomous personality drawing on different sources: Bernardino Poccetti, for the narrative vein, Andrea Tempesta, Francesco Vanni and Salimbeni for formal treatment, to the Dutch Bloemart and Goltzius, known through engravings, for the inventive disadvantage and the landscape interest, to the first mannerists, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Beccafumi, while to Federico Zuccari and Al Barocci he looked during the not short stay in the Marche.

Some works
Los Angeles, County Museum, The Triumph of Mordecai
Florence, Oratory of San Pierino, cloister, Martyrdom of S. Bartomeo, detached fresco transferred on canvas, 1587
Florence, Oratory of San Pierino, cloister, Temperance, detached fresco on canvas, 1587
Florence, Uffizi, The wedding of Cana
Florence, Uffizi, San Sebastiano
Florence, Palatine Gallery, Birth of Mary
Pisa, Villa di Corliano, Convivio of the gods, 1592
Pisa, Chiesa del Carmine, Annunciation, 1593
Pisa, National Museum of San Matteo (deposits), San Francesco in ecstasy
Florence, church of San Lorenzo alle Rose, The miracle of St. Nicholas, 1596
Florence, church of Sant’Ambrogio, Visitazione, 1596
Fabriano, Pinacoteca, Annunciation; Madonna and Saints; Nativity
Macerata, Civic Museums of Palazzo Buonaccorsi, The Madonna with the belt and the saints Tommaso, Lorenzo and Francesco, 1604
Macerata, Church of Santa Maria delle Vergini (Macerata), Decoration of the apsidal dome of the chapel of the Compagnia dei Vergini, 1605
Macerata, Cathedral of San Giuliano, Madonna with Child, Saint Andrew and Saint Sebastian
Carassai AP – Marche, Church of Santa Maria del Buon Gesù, Crucifixion, 1601
Octavian, Church of the Rosary, The Adoration of the Magi