LOMBARD PAINTER OF THE 15TH-15TH CENTURY Nativity Oil on panel, 57.5X40 cm Inscribed on the verso: Roma Fran [..]6 8[..]X bre (in ancient) Dossi Provenance: Italy, private collection Referred to Dosso Dossi from Ferrara in the collection to which he belonged, the panel shows clear affinities with the works of Giovanni Agostino da Lodi (Lodi, c. 1470 and active between 1490 and 1515), an artist also known by the name of Pseudo Boccaccino given to him by Wilhelm Bode (Cf. W. von Bode, Un maestro anonimo dell'antica scuola lombarda (il Pseudo Boccaccino), in Archivio Storico dell'Arte, 1890, pp. 193-195). In fact, it was the German scholar who distinguished between the works of Giovanni Agostino and those of Boccaccio Boccaccino (Ferrara, before 1466 ; Cremona, 1525), but it was not until Malaguzzi Valeri's intervention in 1912 that the real personality of the master became known, thanks to the discovery in the Bazzero collection in Milan (later in the Pinacoteca di Brera) of a painting signed 'Johes Augusti / nus Laudesis P.' (Cf. F. Malaguzzi Valeri, Chi è lo 'Pseudo Boccaccino', in Rassegna d'Arte, 1912, 6, pp. 99-100), 'which proves to be entirely similar to the paintings grouped under the pseudonym Boccaccino' (F. Moro, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, ovvero l'Agostino di Bramantino: appunti per un unico percorso, in Paragone, XL, 1989, 473, pp. 23-61). It is not possible here to list and comment on the critical developments that occurred during the 20th century, but it is possible to highlight the salient aspects that characterise the artist, whose Milanese training dictated by the examples of Donato Bramante, Bramantino, Leonardo and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio is combined with the Venetian culture of Alvise Vivarini, Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini. This mixture can be clearly perceived by observing his first known public work: the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist, Ambrose, Augustine and George, now in the church of San Giacomo in Gerenzano, which proves that the artist was familiar with Venetian painting and thus an early presence in the lagoon city, also attested by the Washing of the Feet dated 1500 in the Accademia Gallery. Consequently, the Lodi artist must be acknowledged as the one who spread Leonardo's culture in the Veneto and, as Franco Moro points out, his first presence in Venice during the last decade of the 15th century is plausible, a chronology that is also confirmed by the 1492 commission of the Pala dei Barcaioli del traghetto di Murano (now in San Pietro martire in Murano), which is confirmed as his earliest work in Veneto and certainly an example for the young Giorgione (L. Simonetto, in Arte lombarda, 84-85, 1988, pp. 73-84; Moro 1989). Returning to the painting presented here, one can perceive the preponderance of the landscape backdrop whose characters find various points of comparison. We can cite that present in the Madonna, Child and Two Devotees of Capodimonte, with the same sharp rocks characterised by geological cracks (F. Moro, in Pittura tra Adda e Serio. Lodi, Treviglio, Caravaggio and Crema, Milan 1987, p. 103, table 28), as well as the type of trees we find in the slightly later plates in the Thyssen collection (Cf. J. M. Pita Andrade and M. del Mar Borobia Guerrero, Old Masters Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Barcelona 1992, p. 184). Moving on to the figure pieces, we find the face of the Virgin in the Madonna and Child with St. Sebastian in the Galleria Estense in Modena and even more so in the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Allentown Museum, in which the similarity of the old St. Joseph with the Wizard King of the Brera Adoration can be seen, made with Marco d'Oggiono who was responsible for the figures of the Virgin de Bimbo (Cf. F. Moro, in Pinacoteca di Brera. Lombard and Piedmontese Schools 1300-1535, Milan 1988, pp. 337-340, no. 150).