Italian painter well known for his painting “the concert” featuring three musicians singing with the central figure playing a beautifully depicted lute (see: https://www.artelista.com/en/ypobra.php?o=8547)
ALTHOUGH, long before Lorenzo Costa died, his disciple Ercole Ferrarese was in very good repute and was invited to work in many places, he would never abandon his master (a thing which is rarely wont to happen), and was content to work with him for meager gains and praise, rather than labor by himself for greater profit and credit. For this gratitude, in view of its rarity among the men of today, all the more praise is due to Ercole, who, knowing himself to be indebted to Lorenzo, put aside all thought of his own interest in favor of his master's wishes, and was like a brother or a son to him up to the end of his life. Ercole, then, who was a better draughtsman than Costa, painted, below the panel executed by Lorenzo in the Chapel of San Vincenzio in San Petronio, certain scenes in tempera with little figures, so well and with so beautiful and good a manner, that it is scarcely possible to see anything better, or to imagine the labor and diligence that Ercole put into the work; and thus the predella is a much better painting than the panel. Both were wrought at one and the same time during the life of Costa. (...) http://members.efn.org/~acd/vite/VasariErcole.html acc. 07/01/15