The Foundation of the Certosa di Pavia

The courtly simplicity of Gian Cristoforo Romano, with its sense of balance and the ennobling stamp of an academically reassuring classicism, certainly impressed Briosco, who, in the scenes carved near the entrance of the Certosa, arranges the figures in space in measured rhythmic relationships and often in studied symmetries. Figures which, though constrained in geometric modules, still retain something of Amadeo’s naturalistic definition and nervous tension, more than of the elegant cruelty of the Mantegazza.