Scarsellino
1620 · Duchy of Ferrara · School of Ferrara, Renaissance, Mannerism
The story
Seven paintings by Ippolito Scarsella, called Scarsellino, belong to the Galleria Borghese, and the collecting began early. Venus Discovering the Dead Adonis already appears in the inventory of Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 1620s, and the list of 1693 records a copper with the Massacre of the Innocents by Scarsellino of Ferrara.
He was born in Ferrara around 1550, son of a minor painter and architect, and spent about four years in Venice as a young man, in the orbit of Paolo Veronese. Ferrara's own tradition, the dreamlike landscapes of Dosso Dossi, stayed with him, and the landscapes in his small religious and mythological scenes are what collectors prized. The Massacre of the Innocents shows another side, a crowded scene of struggling figures beneath tall colonnades, on a subject Guido Reni of Bologna had also painted. Scarsellino died in Ferrara in 1620.
