Our Lady of Good Counsel

Defendente Ferrari was a Piedmontese painter active in the first third of the sixteenth century, working primarily in the Chieri and Vercelli area. He combined late Gothic devotional tendencies with early Renaissance spatial awareness, producing altarpieces and panels for local churches and confraternities. Our Lady of Good Counsel was a specifically Augustinian Marian devotion associated with the sanctuary at Genazzano in Lazio, and the subject appears in North Italian painting from the fifteenth century onward. Defendente's version would likely follow the iconic format — the Virgin and Child in a close, jewel-like image — typical of his highly refined panel-painting technique.

Defendente Ferrari's panels are characterised by brilliant, enamelled colour and meticulous attention to surface detail — brocade, gold tooling, transparent veils. The figures are set against gold or landscape backgrounds, the faces combining Gothic sweetness with a quietly Renaissance spatial confidence.