Sulle tracce di Stefano da Ferrara nella basilica del Santo di Padova

This contribution begins by analysing the fourteenth-century fresco Four Saints (Cosmas, Damian, Bartholomew and a Knight Saint), which has recently been restored in the Madonna Mora Chapel of Saint Anthony’s Basilica, together with the later, early-fifteenth century Madonna in Throne with Child. Giorgio Vasari, in the ‘‘Life of Andrea Mantegna’’ in the second edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, attributes the Four Saints to the renowned painter Stefano da Ferrara, also author of the venerated image of the Madonna del Pilastro. The oldest and most authoritative sources also attribute the now-lost Miracles of Saint Anthony painted in the Chapel of the Ark to Stefano da Ferrara. Based on this connection, the contribution reconstructs Stefano’s work in St. Anthony’s Basilica which includes, in addition to the Madonna and Child with Client painted on the pillar of the pulpit, attributed to Stefano by Mauro Lucco and dated 1376, the Madonna of Humility and Saints painted in the lunette over the tomb of Federico Lavellongo, soldier and podesta` of Padua who died in 1373. The lunette is located in the corridor that leads from the Basilica to the Chapter Cloister. Facing a quite complex critical history, which considers the artist from Ferrara as one of the protagonists of fourteenth-century figurative painting in Padua, and who according to studies worked in Ferrara (Minerbi-Dal Sale house), Cremona (Church of Saint Augustine), Treviso (Church of Saint Catherine) and Padua (Church of the Eremitani, Church of Saint Stephan and Chapel of the Carrarese Castle), the present article attempts to redefine the times and locations of the painter’s activity, relying for now on his documented activity in Padua, as well as on the only work connected to his name.