The J. Paul Getty Museum

Defendente Ferrari's birth is unrecorded but scholars know that he came from the Italian city of Chivasso. Although he seems to have been fairly prolific, an altarpiece painted for the town of Ranverso in 1531 is his only documented work. Scholars have also attributed a larger group of unsigned paintings to him. Ferrari's style exhibits the highly refined qualities of late Gothic art, a style that persisted in northwest Italy into the 1500s.