Baldassare d'Este (Baldassare da Reggio), Italian painter and medallist. He was brought up as the adopted son of a certain Giovanni Bonayti, but a document of 1489 records him as the (illegitimate) son of Niccolò III d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara. In most documents, however, he is called 'Baldassare da Reggio'. Baldassare d'Este is almost unknown today, yet in his generation he was the court painter at Ferrara, and for forty years portrayed the features of successive dukes and statesmen and all the array of distinguished people that thronged the brilliant court of the Estes. Himself a child of Duke Niccolò III, he enjoyed a natural advantage to which the illegitimacy of his birth was no bar. Born at Reggio, in the Emilia, Baldassare is first heard of in 1460, when in the service of the Sforzas at Milan. In 1469 he was employed by Galeazzo Maria Sforza to paint his portrait and that of his wife, in the Castle of Pavia, and soon after was received into the service of his own half-brother, Borso, Duke of Ferrara, who appointed him, together with Cosmè Tura, Court painter to the Este family. From 1469-74 he produced many portraits, including four different likenesses of Duke Borso himself. He was also employed to retouch many of the heads in the famous frescoes in the Schifanoia Palace, where Francesco Cossa and other Ferrarese masters had been at work. After Borso's death he twice painted the new Duke, Ercole I, and also the Neapolitan envoy, Fabrizio Caraffa. Not one of these portraits has been identified, but medals by him, dated 1472 and representing Ercole I, are known. Some time before 1489, he received the post of captain of the Porta Castello of Reggio, which he held for some years. He returned to Ferrara, where from 1497 onwards he held the office of captain of Castello Tedaldo. //