. Italian family of painters. The two brothers Giovanni Battista della Rovere (b Milan, c. 1575; d c. 1630) and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere (b Milan, c. 1575; d c. 1640) were known as I Fiamminghini due to the Flemish origin of their father, Riccardo della Rovere, a native of Antwerp. The elder brother is referred to in the sources as Giovanni Battista Fiamminghino and the younger simply as Fiamminghino. They possessed an easy decorative style and worked extensively on canvas and in fresco in Lombardy, Emilia and Piedmont, almost always in collaboration. They helped to popularize late Milanese Mannerism through an expansive narrative style, rich in realistic effects, and based on highly developed and brilliant perspective skills, evident in their spectacular architectural and landscape backgrounds. Their art is indebted to 16th-century Cremonese Mannerism, especially the decorative cycles of the Campi family in S Sigismondo, Cremona, and in S Paolo converso, Milan, and to the work of Camillo Procaccini. In the later works, in which the artistic personality of Giovanni Mauro is dominant, and in Giovanni Mauro's independent works, these influences unite with that of Cerano's enormous canvases from the cycle on the Life of St Carlo Borromeo (1602-04) in Milan Cathedral and of Morazzone, whose iconography and compositions are often adopted wholesale by the Fiamminghini. The art of Gaudenzio Ferrari also encouraged them, in conformity with the demands of the Counter-Reformation, to create a simpler and more didactic art. In 1586 Giovanni Battista frescoed, with Giuseppe Meda (d 1599), the scenes from the Life of John the Baptist in the left transept of Monza Cathedral. Between 1602 and 1604 Giovanni Battista painted, with the partial collaboration of his brother, five large canvases depicting scenes from the Life of St Carlo Borromeo for Milan Cathedral; again in collaboration, the brothers worked on the frescoes for the nave and transept of the abbey of Chiaravalle in Milan (1615), and on several occasions they worked in the sacromonti of Varallo, Orta and Varese. In 1629 Giovanni Battista began the fresco decoration of S Maria delle Grazie at Pavia, which was completed in 1636 by his brother. The latter did much work independently in Como, Gravedona, Peglio, Brenzio and elsewhere. At Novara he painted a cycle of canvases of scenes from the Life of St Gaudenzio (Novara Cathedral) and an Assumption of the Virgin (1618; Novara, Mus. Civ.). Among his last works are the scenes from the Life of St Anthony in the oratorio del Santo at Groppello d'Adda (1638).
See the Abbreviations for further details.
