Church of Saint Christopher and Charterhouse Monumental Cemetery (Chiesa di San Cristoforo e Cimitero monumentale della Certosa)

Attributed by Scalabrini to Jacopo Sansovino, San Cristoforo is today commonly ascribed to Biagio Rossetti, a hypothesis first formulated by Eugenio Righini (1910). Work on the new church of the Certosa di Ferrara (Ferrara Charterhouse) were started at the end of the 15th century and lasted until the middle of the following century; the result of this prolonged building campaign was an innovative church, both with respect to Carthusian customs and in relation to Ferrara’s architectural culture. The building shows a more mature language than other works of sacred architecture where the presence of Biagio is documented. Certain elements of the exterior, the layout and the use of medieval and Venetian Renaissance sources seem, on the other hand, to point to his direction. To accept the attribution to the Ferrara architect, it is possible to hypothesise, considering the extended period of construction, that Rossetti updated his style in the latter years of his life, modifying an initial design, or that after having provided a design, other craftsmen took over and changed it, renewing it in a fully 16th-century sense. Over the centuries, the church of San Cristoforo was endowed with precious furnishings and some of the most important Ferrarese altarpieces.