Il Pordenone

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Il Pordenone, byname of Giovanni Antonio de' Sacchis (c. 1483 - 1539) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school. Vasari, his main biographer, identifies him as Giovanni Antonio Licinio.

[edit] Biography

He was commonly named Il Pordenone from having been born in 1483 at Corticelli, a village near Pordenone in Friuli. He ultimately dropped the name of Licinio, having quarrelled with his brothers, one of whom had wounded him in the hand; he then called himself Regillo, or De Regillo. His signature runs Antonius Portunaensis, or De Portunaonis. He was created a cavaliere by Charles V.

As a painter Pordenone was a scholar of Pellegrino da S. Daniele, but a leading influence of his style was Giorgione; the popular story that he was a fellow-pupil with Titian under Giovanni Bellini is false. The district about Pordenone had been somewhat fertile in capable painters; but Pordenone is the best known, a vigorous chiaroscurist and flesh painter. The 1911 Britannica states that "so far as mere flesh-painting is concerned he was barely inferior to Titian in breadth, pulpiness and tone". The two were rivals for a time, and Licinio would sometimes affect to wear arms while he was painting. He excelled in portraits; he was equally at home in fresco and in oil-color. He executed many works in Pordenone and elsewhere in Friuli, Cremona, and Venice; at one time he settled in Piacenza, where one of his most celebrated church pictures, St. Catherine disputing with the Doctors in Alexandria is located; the figure of St. Paul in connection with this picture is his own portrait.

He was invited by Duke Ercole II of Ferrara to court; here soon afterwards, in 1539, he died, not without suspicion of poison. His later works are comparatively careless and superficial; and generally he is better in male figures than in female-the latter being somewhat too sturdy-and the composition of his subject-pictures is scarcely on a level with their other merits. Pordenone appears to have been a vehement self-asserting man, to which his style as a painter corresponds.

Three of his principal pupils were Bernardino Licinio, named Il Sacchiense, his son-in-law Pomponio Amalteo, and Giovanni Maria Calderari.

[edit] Partial anthology of works

• Study of the Martyrdom of Saint Peter Martyr", (1526, John Paul Getty Museum)
• Saint Bonaventure,(National Gallery, London)[1]
• Saint Louis of Toulouse", (National Gallery, London)[2]
• Saints Prosdocimus & St. Peter (1516, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh).
• Golgotha (1520-21, fresco, Cathedral of Cremona)
• Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints (c. 1525, Parish church, Susegana, Treviso)[3]
• St Lorenzo Giustiniani and Other Saints (1532, originally in S. Maria dell' Orto, now Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice)
• Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints (1525)
• Saint Martin and Saint Christopher (1528-29, Church of San Rocco, Venice)
• San Lorenzo Giustiniani & Two Friars with Saints (1532, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence)
• Saints Sebastian, Roch and Catherine (1535, Church of San Giovanni Elemosinario, Venice)[4].
• Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints (1525, Parish Church, Grandcamp, France).
• The dispute of Saint Catherine with Pagan Philosophers" (Cathedral of Piacenza)[5]
• San Gottardo and Saints Sebastian and Rocco (Museo Civico d’Arte, Pordenone)
• Saint Catherine and Martyrs (Museo Civico di Conegliano)
• Drawings from Ambrosiana Library, Milan
• Magi (Treviso Cathedral[6])

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.