The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 3 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth CenturyLanzi, Luigi
History
The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 3 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Lanzi, Luigi
Painting -- Italy -- History
The city of Trevigi may boast of two artists belonging to the same
class, though widely differing from each other. One of these is Rocco
Marconi, distinguished by Zanetti among some of the best disciples of
Bellini, and erroneously referred by Ridolfi to the school of Palma. He
excelled in accuracy of design, taste of colouring, and diligence of
hand, though not always sufficiently easy in his contours, and for the
most part exhibiting a severity almost approaching to plebeian
coarseness in his countenances. Even in the earliest production
attributed to him, executed in the year 1505, and preserved in the
church of San Niccolo, at Trevigi, Ridolfi detects that peculiar
clearness of style, which may be traced also so strongly in his Three
Apostles, at SS. Giovanni and Paolo, as well as in his few other
pictures dispersed among the public places. Indeed half-length figures
of this artist are by no means of rare occurrence in private
collections, though he can boast no single specimen so beautiful, or so
completely _Giorgionesque_ as his Judgment of the Adulteress, to be seen
in the chapter of San Giorgio Maggiore, and of which there is either a
duplicate or a copy at San Pantaleo, and in other places. The other of
these two artists is Paris Bordone, the elevation of whose mind and
genius seemed to correspond with that of his birth. After having been a
pupil of Titian for a short period, he became an enthusiastic imitator
of Giorgione, finally adopting an originality of manner, whose peculiar
grace bears no resemblance to that of any other painter. His forms may
truly be said to breathe, to glow, and even to laugh, with a force of
colouring, which, incapable of displaying a greater degree of truth than
that of Titian, aimed, nevertheless, at more variety and attraction;
while, at the same time, they were not wanting in delicacy of design,
novelty of drapery, propriety of composition, and a peculiarly lively
air of the heads. In the church of S. Giobbe he produced a picture of S.
Andrew embracing his Cross, with an angel seen hovering above, in the
act of bestowing upon him the crown of martyrdom; while in one of the
two saints, represented at the side, he drew the figure of S. Peter, in
the act of gazing upon him with a kind of envy; an idea equally novel
and picturesque. A similar method he adopted in other of his works,
produced in great part for the ornament of his native place and its
vicinity. Not a subject but is taken from the antique; yet each of them
is treated with originality. Of such kind, is that picture of a true
Paradise, seen in the Ognissanti at Trevigi, and those evangelical
mysteries in the cathedral of the same city, represented in an
altarpiece, divided into six different groups, at the request, it is
presumed, of the person who engaged him to execute it. Here we behold,
assembled in a small space, every thing of the most pleasing and
beautiful kind, which he has elsewhere scattered throughout the whole of
his works.
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