A leading figure in sixteenth-century painting between eastern Piedmont and Milan, Gerolamo Giovenone was born in Vercelli in 1490 and died in his native city in 1555. Coming from a family of craftsmen and artists, specifically experts in carpentry and wood carving, the young Giovenone's training began in the workshop of Giovanni Martino Spanzotti and his collaborator, Defendente Ferrari. The influence of this environment is visible in early sixteenth-century works such as the Assumption in the Budapest Museum or the St. Nicholas of Tolentino in the Turin church of St. Augustine.
The relationship between Spanzotti's workshop and milieu and Giovenone was to alternate between emancipation and rapprochement throughout the artist's career, as can be seen on comparison of the side panels of the Meschiati polyptych and the panel painting Dispute in the Temple (1513) at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville. In the former, there is a distance between him and his former tutor, with an entirely personal style. However, in the latter work, Giovenone slavishly follows not so much Spanzotti's style as that of his disciple Ferrari.
Two important works by Giovenone date back to 1514–16, still showing evidence of the artist's collaboration with Ferrari: the Buronzo Altarpiece and the Raspa Altarpiece. The first is characterised by a refined and balanced architectural approach, in which the client and her children stand out with a calm but present emotional dimension. By contrast, the Raspa Altarpiece exhibits a very different style, where, despite the revival of themes particularly dear to Defendente, Giovenone wanted to rework the altarpiece. He did so by altering the colors, the motifs depicted, and the construction layout, mindful of the work carried out by his family.
From the 1520s onwards, the style of Giovenone appears to be influenced by Gaudenzio Ferrari, the master of Giovenone's younger brother. Elements that denote this influence are an unprecedented emotional register in the depiction of the characters, greater attention to shading, and above all a softness in the rendering of the figures. This is clearly visible in the triptych in the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts depicting the Madonna and Child, Four Saints and Two Devotees, whose iconography and structure appear to have been taken from some of Gaudenzio's perspectives.
The late phase of his work included Madonna and Child, Saints and a Patron (1538) in the cathedral of Biella, which was created at the request of the Frichignono family, where we see a fourth and final artist who left a profound mark on the master's style, namely the young Bernardino Lanino, a disciple of Gaudenzio.