Antonio Rimpatta

Antonio Rimpatta was probably born in Bologna and is thought, on stylistic grounds, to have trained in Emilia during the final decade of the fifteenth century, though no school, master, or apprenticeship record has been found. Archival research published by A. Ugolini identifies him as the brother of the painter Jacopo Ripanda and places both men in Rome as early as 1500.

He is documented for the first time in his own right in 1501 in Naples, where he signed the Mormile Polyptych, a work now conserved at the Cenacolo di Fuligno in Florence. Between 1509 and 1511, working again in Naples, he executed a large altarpiece, the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, commissioned by the church of San Pietro ad Aram. The painting was set into a gilded wood frame carved by Giovanni da Nola, and is now held by the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte. A figure in blue at the far left of the composition is believed by some scholars to be a self-portrait of the artist. His painting is described in the literature as blending elements of Francia, Antoniazzo Romano, and Perugino with Raphaelesque touches.

Documentation of Rimpatta continues to 1531 or 1532, the range given for his death in specialist art historical sources. No exact death date or place has been confirmed.

Modern critical attention to Rimpatta is thin and specialist rather than broad. The core literature consists of F. Zeri's 1963 note in Bollettino d'arte and A. Ugolini's 2010 study in Arte cristiana, which situates him among lesser figures of Peruginism in Bologna, plus the archival article identifying his brother Jacopo Ripanda. Museum catalogue material treats his Capodimonte altarpiece as a fixed, dated point in early sixteenth century Neapolitan commissions rather than as the subject of extended critical debate. No verbatim assessment of his work by a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for inclusion here.

Antonio Rimpatta has no confirmed all-time auction record that can be stated with a specific price, currency, house, and date. Market-tracking sites list annual record-price titles under his name for the years 2001, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2020, and 2024, including a work titled Christ as the Man of Sorrows that Christie's has separately catalogued with a biographical note, but none of the sources located publish the hammer price or exact sale date needed to confirm an auction record. His two best documented works, the Capodimonte altarpiece and the Mormile Polyptych, are institutionally held and are not circulating in private hands. A specialist online compilation also lists a Saint Sebastian at the Walters Art Museum and a Holy Family at the Art Institute of Chicago as attributed to him, but these two attributions rest on a single secondary source and have not been confirmed by the museums' own catalogues.

Any work proposed as an Antonio Rimpatta should be approached as an attribution question rather than a market one. There is no catalogue raisonne, no certificate of authenticity program, and no confirmed auction price to benchmark against, so due diligence depends on the same archival and stylistic scholarship that identified his signed works, chiefly the Zeri and Ugolini literature and the documents tying him to his brother Jacopo Ripanda. The two institutionally confirmed works, at the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte and the Cenacolo di Fuligno, are not available for sale and should be treated as reference points rather than comparables. Attributions drawn only from secondary compilations, such as the works cited at the Walters Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago, warrant direct confirmation from the institutions' own curatorial departments before being relied upon.