Gian-Francesco de Maineri

Giovanni Francesco Maineri was a court painter in Ferrara at the end of the 15th century, when that small duchy on the Po ran one of Italy's most polished artistic courts under the Este family. Born in Parma, probably to a painter father, he trained in the workshop of Ercole de' Roberti, the sharp, nervous master of the Ferrarese school.

He first turns up in the Este records in 1489 and worked for the court on and off until 1506, with a spell in Mantua in between. He was a miniaturist as much as a panel painter, and it shows: his pictures are loaded with hard, jewel-like detail, painted marble and gold, the patient finish of a manuscript illuminator scaled up.

His name is tied above all to images of Christ carrying the cross, a close half-length devotional subject that he and other Emilian painters turned out for private prayer. Several versions survive under his name, though some are given to him only cautiously, the attributions still argued over.