FONTANA, PROSPERO (1512-1597), Italian painter, was born in Bologna, and became a pupil of Innocenzo Francucci da Imola. He afterwards worked for Vasari and Perino del Vaga in Genoa, Florence and Rome. He has left a large quantity of work in Bologna where he lived after 154o. A representative work of his early period is the "Entombment" in the Bologna Pinacoteca, painted under the influence of his first master and comparatively careful in execution. To his later period belongs the "St. Alessis distributing Alms," in S. Giacomo Maggiore at Bologna (1576), with many figures in architectural setting, in the mannered style of Vasari's pupils. In portraiture he was outshone by his daughter and pupil, Lavinia. He died in Bologna in