Amico Aspertini was born in Bologna between 1474 and 1475. An original and highlycultured painter, in a period for Bologna of particularly flat aesthetics along the lines of Perugino and Raffaello, Aspertini maintained an autonomous artistic personality, “in the manner of one who would never be subjected”.
Having worked in Rome for Pope Alexander VI, in 1506, with the Francia and the Costa, he created the frescoes of Santa Cecilia in Bologna, followed by those of San Frediano in Lucca.
The masterpiece of his mature years was the decoration of three rooms in the Rocca Isolani in Minerbio. His preparatory cartoons for the work are today kept in the British Museum in London.
The frescoes in the Astronomy Room in particular, with their illusionistic vision, represent the most significant organic introduction of a taste for painted architecture which would prove so successful in Bologna from the second half of the 16th century onwards. The complex of Rocca Isolani, a masterpiece of 16th-century Bolognese architecture, can be visited on the occasion of special events.
Important works by Amico Aspertini are also kept in the Pinacoteca (Art Gallery) Nazionale in Bologna and in the Churches of San Petronio and San Martino, where he was buried on the 19th November 1552.
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