Lattanzio Gambara (1530 - 1574) was an Italian artist who was discovered in 1545 by Giulio Campi, a painter who was based in Cremona. Giulio took him to Cremona as his pupil and taught him Emilian and Lombard Mannerist style that was then very fashionable. Gambara stayed in Cremona for 4 years then returned to Brescia, where he studied under most important painter in Brescia, whose daughter he married in 1556, and with whom he later collaborated regularly. Gambara was a prolific draftsman and fresco painter, and he became a leading artist in Brescia after the death of his teacher in 1560. His style combined monumental qualities and complex foreshortening with decorative elegance. In time, Gambara exchanged many of the lively aspects of his Mannerism for a more classic orientation.
The artist lived in Parma from 1567 to 1573, and worked on one of his most significant frescoes, the internal facade of Parma cathedral and nave arcade, in collaboration with Bernardino Gatti, a renowned painter in Cremona. He then returned to Brescia to begin frescoes for a church there. Gambara also painted a series of frescoes that decorated the Loggia of Brescia. The frescoes were on the History of the Apocalypse but they were destroyed by bombing in 1944. Gambara painted altarpieces in Polirone for the abbey of Saint Benedict. He also decorated Palazzo Mayo in Cadignano (in collaboration with Antonio Campi and Giulio). He died due to a fall from scaffolding in a church vault - the cupola of S. Lorenzo in Brescia. He fell off the scaffold and died before completing the frescoes.
