The historiography of Gasparo Cairano, which began during the sculptor's lifetime and remains incomplete even today after more than five hundred years, has involved numerous critical voices. This has resulted in a substantial and varied body of literature, yet it tends toward an almost total misrecognition of the artist and his work. Along with Gasparo Cairano, the historiographical path of Brescian Renaissance sculpture and its other protagonists never received due recognition in artistic and literary culture, remaining forgotten even by local sources. The primary reason lies in a very long series of errors, omissions, and misunderstandings that occurred in the literary field from the outset, leading to a genuine oblivion regarding the cultural and qualitative level achieved by the Brescian School in the thirty years spanning the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as the names of its key figures. The loss of archival documentsIn particular, the accounts of the City of Brescia for the construction of the Loggia, the archives of the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, all the documentation for the construction of San Pietro in Oliveto, the details of the commissions for the Martinengo Mausoleum and the Ark of St. Apollonius, and the Caprioli family papers were lost. The reasons for the loss of each document vary; see the bibliographical references for each work. or of the works themselves, which were often fragmented or even destroyed, has certainly contributed, although much has been preserved. Only since the mid-20th century have new studies, supported by the recovery of archives, enabled the critical rediscovery not only of Gasparo Cairano but of the entire chapter of Brescian sculpture—a panorama still incomplete in many aspects and occasionally filled in by new research on documents and works.. Historiographical path through the centuries The silence of contemporary literature One of the most striking silences is found in the local artistic literature contemporary to the sculptor's activity.. Firstly, the timing of Marin Sanudo's visit to Brescia was inconvenient; a potential admirer of the burgeoning local Renaissance, he passed through in 1483, a few years before the start of work on the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. Marcantonio Michiel, conversely, dedicated no chapter to Brescia in his Notizia d'opere di disegno (compiled starting in 1521). However, he did mention Gasparo Cairano, identifying him as the brother of "Anzolino Bressano, ovver Milanese," a master of terracotta, providing a valuable record of the Brescian sculptor at least four years after his death.
There is no mention of Gasparo Cairano in Elia Capriolo's chronicle of c. 1505, which only vaguely references the Brescian Renaissance flourishing at the time and its protagonists—"the painters, goldsmiths, and sculptors, emulators of Apelles and Praxiteles"—reserving praise only for the later Stefano Lamberti. Even the humanist Vosonius, in a Latin carmen dedicated to Brescia around 1498, sang its praises with classical poetic rhetoric, mentioning the Palazzo della Loggia but naming no sculptors. Likewise, the name of Cairano, and indeed that of any other figure from the Brescian sculptural scene of the time, does not appear in the manuscripts of Pandolfo Nassino and Lucillo Ducco.
Nevertheless, Gasparo Cairano must have enjoyed some posthumous fame, as Michiel's quotation suggests. This omission is also puzzling in light of Gasparo's descendants, for whom documents attest to individuals active in various artistic fields for at least two generations: between 1545 and 1561, Gasparo Cairano "the Younger"—also a sculptor, son of Simone and thus grandson of Gasparo "the Elder", from whom he even inherited his baptismal name—is recorded in various archival sources.Archivio di Stato di Brescia, Archivio Storico Civico, polizze d'estimo, cartelle 30, 257b, [estimi 1534, II-VII S. Faustino]Camillo Boselli has made known some documents about “Gasparo Cairano the Younger” that attest to his activity between 1545 and 1558: see These include his membership in the Corporation of Stoneworkers in 1557 and, dated to the same year, a contract for the construction of some columns for the monastery of Santa Giulia in Brescia. The citation by Pomponius Gauricus Gasparo Cairano received a single, illustrious mention in the historiography of the period: Pomponius Gauricus's De sculptura, published in Florence in 1504.. In it, the humanist offered the Brescian sculptor a flattering tribute in Latin, notably mentioning the Palazzo della Loggia and the Cycle of the Caesars:
This note bestowed great honor upon the sculptor and his Caesars, as well as the Loggia's architecture. Just twelve years after construction began, they found a place alongside the great figures of Italian sculpture in a publication of profound artistic culture specifically dedicated to figurative matters; Cairano was the only Lombard sculptor named besides Cristoforo Solari. Gauricus cited not the carvings of the Sanctuary of the Miracles, but rather the architecture and the antique-style busts of the Loggia, thus signaling a clear preference for the modernity embodied in these works. However, this promise of fame would remain confined to the pages of De Sculptura: after the successful first Florentine edition in 1504, the treatise would not be republished in Italy for at least three hundred years, finding only limited circulation beyond the Alps.Notable are the Antwerp, Nuremberg and Brussels editions of 1528, 1542 and 1603, respectively. Cf. for further study. Indeed, no reference to Gauricus is found in local sources or, more generally, in any art-related literature until the 19th century. Giorgio Vasari's misunderstanding and Cairano's disappearance from contemporary literature However, the primary responsibility for Gasparo Cairano's fall into oblivion, and for a series of misconceptions surrounding his figure, lies with Giorgio Vasari. In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, in the section devoted to Lombard artists, the scholar states that he has "recently been in Brescia". Following this, he sings the praises of the great masters of local painting, showing a marked interest in painting over other arts. Renaissance sculpture receives only a passing mention concerning Giovanni Gaspare Pedoni from Lugano, "who has done many things in Cremona and Brescia [...] that are beautiful and praiseworthy". This involves a clear misunderstanding of the artist's identity, which was hugely consequential for art criticism in the centuries to come; indeed, Pedoni is entirely absent from the Brescian Renaissance scene, both in documents and attributed works.. At the time of his visit to Brescia and the compilation of the pages dedicated to it, Vasari was certainly aware of Pomponius Gauricus's De Sculptura, where "Gaspar Mediolanensis", author of the Loggia's Caesars, is named. It is likely, however, that no Brescian could provide him with further information about this sculptor, reflecting the ignorance revealed even by learned local sources of the time. Furthermore, sculptural taste had radically changed by then with the Mannerist revolution led by Jacopo Sansovino. Not coincidentally, Giacomo Medici, a pupil of Sansovino, is the only Brescian sculptor mentioned by Vasari. Possessing additional information about Pedoni's activity in nearby Cremona, Vasari probably conflated the two figures, identifying Gaspare Pedoni from Lugano (i.e., Milanese) with Gauricus's "Gaspar Mediolanensis", perhaps attributing the local ignorance to the sculptor's foreign origin. The publication of the Lives erased Gasparo Cairano's name from Brescian history for at least two centuries..
By the late 16th century, Brescian art literature, although interested in the works of its past—especially the Loggia and its rich palimpsest of sculptures—was no longer able to identify the names of the sculptors responsible. An example is Patrizio Spini's Supplimento, written in 1585 as an appendix to the vernacular edition of Elia Capriolo's Chronicle. Spini offers the reader a lengthy digression on the Loggia,. in which the exaltation of every artistic detail starkly contrasts with the complete absence of the names of the artists behind such magnificence. Additionally, the involvement of figures such as Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea Palladio, and Galeazzo Alessi in the palace's construction (resumed mid-century) had focused scholarly interest primarily on architectural matters, relegating sculptural features to the background.
The last 16th-century mention of Gasparo Cairano appears not in Brescia but in Salò:. Bongianni Grattarolo, in his Historia della Riviera di Salò (written 1587, printed Brescia 1599), still recalled "a master Gasparo Bresciano" as the author of the cathedral portal. However, this is merely an onomastic memory, disconnected from his historical and artistic identity, as well as from the works the sculptor produced in the city.
Between the 17th and 18th centuries By the 17th century, Brescian art literature focused on the local Renaissance scene only to celebrate its school of painting and its protagonists—Moretto, Romanino, and Vincenzo Foppa. The flourishing field of sculpture remained unexplored, with no attempt made to address this gap, almost as if the problem did not exist. During the same period, a type of local, anti-Vasarian art literature began to spread in Brescia, as in the rest of northern Italy, aiming to rehabilitate figures neglected in the Lives. However, this new trend also failed to yield significant results. In Brescia, the most important text of this genre is Ottavio Rossi's Elogi Historici di Bresciani illustri, published in 1620, where the author praises all the most famous Brescian painters. The only local sculptor mentioned, however, is the Sansovino follower Giacomo Medici, cited by Giorgio Vasari as "one of the rarest sculptors in Italy".. The fact that works like the facade of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and the Loggia's Caesars significantly predate Medici seems not to concern the Brescian scholar, possibly due to a genuine misunderstanding of pre-Mannerist styles introduced by Sansovino. Thus began a new critical trend viewing Giacomo Medici as the illustrious creator of Brescian works, significantly impacting the bibliography following Rossi.There are at least two seventeenth-century publications praising Giacomo Medici with clear reference to Rossi, namely and . See also Nevertheless, the 17th century also saw the first glimmers of interest in the sculptural works of the Brescian Renaissance; though misunderstood, they managed to arouse the curiosity of local writers. First among these is Bernardino Faino's guide to the city, the earliest historical guide to Brescia. The scholar observed the Ark of St. Apollonius and its "small, beautiful stories of the saint", taking care to specify that "the author of this work is not known, being an ancient thing".. Similarly, the Caprioli Adoration, which Faino correctly saw installed in the lost tomb of Luigi Caprioli in San Giorgio, is described as "a carefully made thing, a very ancient thing." Similar praise for the Caprioli relief appears in Francesco Paglia's Giardino della Pittura, written between 1675 and 1713. In the chapter dedicated to the Old Cathedral, after honoring Alessandro Vittoria's funeral monument for Domenico Bollani, Paglia states that "it is best to omit certain other little things"—referring to none other than the Ark of Berardo Maggi and the funeral monument of Domenico de Dominici—to admire an "ark carved with beautiful figures of white marble", namely the Ark of St. Apollonius, housed in the Winter Cathedral during those years. In praising the Loggia, Paglia also ventured attributions involving Bramante and, again, Giacomo Medici, names drawn from earlier literature.