Resumen de Sur le bestiaire de fra Giovanni da Verona
The Bestiary of Fra Giovanni da Verona.
Fra Giovanni da Verona (around 1457-1525), one of the greatest marquetry artists of the Italian Renaissance, was a Benedictine monk even in the exercise of his art. Author of several remarkable church choirs, he consulted the liturgical books of his brothers in religion for the realization of stalls, lecterns, and wardrobes, using a repertory of images that in their inexhaustible variety, constantly offered matter for meditation. Animals figure among the most successful subjects represented by the monk-marquetry artist. More realistic in the sculpted secondary scenes, more stylized in the main scenes in marquetry, they bear witness to the attention that the Benedict order and its art brought to the depiction of reality. In nature, the artist from the congregation of Mont-Olivet seized the inviatation to joy expressed by the singing of the monks united in the choir in order to celebrate the liturgy of the hours, as well as the incessant call to the virtues embodied by the good Christian. The liturgical furnishings realized by Fra Giovanni for the choir of Santa Maria in Organo in Verona (1494-1501) are complete, which makes his sculptures and his marquetries the designated tools for defining the keys to the reading of the animal world as proposed by this extraordinary artist, in his relations with the exegetical tradition as well as with his innovative inventions.
