Paolo Farinati
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Paolo Farinati (also called as Farinato or Farinato degli Uberti; c. 1524 - c. 1606) was an Italian painter of the Mannerist style, active in mainly in his native Verona, but also in Mantua and Venice.
He may have ancestors among Florentine stock to which belonged the Ghibelline leader Farinata degli Uberti, celebrated in Dante's Divina Commedia. He was a contemporary of the prominent artist of Verona, Paolo Veronese. He was succeeded by other members of the Cagliari family, of whom most or all were outlived by Farinato. He was instructed, according to Giorgio Vasari, by his father and by the Veronese Niccolo Giolfino, and probably by Antonio Badile and Domenico del Riccio (Brusasorci). His first major work was an altarpiece for the duomo di Mantua.
Proceeding to Mantua, he formed his initial style partly on the influence of Giulio Romano. Vasari praised his thronged compositions and merit of draughtsmanship. His works are to be found not only in Venice and principally in Verona, but also in Padua and other towns belonging or adjacent to the Venetian territory. Later, he accommodated to a style similar to that of Paolo Veronese.
He was a prosperous and light-hearted man, and continually progressed in his art, passing from a comparatively dry manner into a larger and bolder one, with much attraction of drapery and of landscape. The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, painted in the church of S. Giorgio in Verona, is accounted his masterpiece, executed at the advanced age of seventy-nine, and crowded with fitures. A Last Supper was painted by him in Santa Maria in Organo; also in this church, he painted a Michael expelling Lucifer and Massacre of the Innocents. In Piacenza is a St Sixtus; in Berlin a Presentation in the Temple; and in the communal gallery of Verona one of his masterpieces, the Marriage of St Catherine. Farinati executed some sculptures, and various etchings of sacred and mythologic subjects. He is said to have died at the same hour as his wife. His son Orazio was also a painter of merit.
Farinati is notable for having kept a detailed journal of his activities from 1573 until his death. His many drawings on tinted paper are particularly notable.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). in Pelican History of Art: Painting in Italy, 1500-1600. Penguin Books, p. 564.
