Marco Marziale
Marco Marziale was a
In about 1500 he may have moved to Cremona, which Venice had just taken over in 1499, and which it held until 1509, when the Duchy of Milan recaptured the city. Marziale would no doubt have been unwelcome after this, if he was in the city. He is not documented there, but painted two altarpieces for Cremonese churches; it is possible these were sent from Venice, although the records of the scuola show him as absent from the city in 1505. In 1507 he signed works now in London and Berlin, after which nothing further about him is known.
Several signed works are known, including the only two large
He was a rather conservative painter, whose works continued to follow compositional formats from the late 15th century, despite his possibly being only a few years older than Giorgione and Titian. His main figures stand upright and still in the older Venetian style, already long superseded in Florentine art. Although his figures are stiff, even "wooden",[5] he takes great interest in textiles and decor in his works. Both the London altarpieces are set in spaces in front of apses decorated with gold mosaics in the manner of San Marco, Venice, and also of altarpieces by Giovanni Bellini.[6] The Circumcision altarpiece features several donor portraits of the family of Tommaso Raimondi, the lawyer and poet who commissioned the work; their lavish and fashionable clothes are carefully depicted.[7] In 1872, the English critic John Ruskin asked a friend in Venice to make a careful drawing of the embroidered table-cloth, probably from Egypt, depicted in the Correr Circumcision, which Ruskin adapted into a pattern for wallpaper which he used in the study of his house Brantwood in the Lake District.[8]
In Cremona, he influenced, and may have trained, Altobello Melone.[9]
Notes
- ^ a b Penny, 103
- ^ Penny, 103-4
- ^ Penny, 103, National Gallery: Circumcision Archived 2009-05-07 at the Wayback Machine, National Gallery: Virgin Enthroned with Saints Archived 2009-05-07 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Christie's New York accessed, May 1, 2009.
- ^ Penny, 104, who adds: "when expression is attempted, his faces are often grotesque".
- ^ Penny, 111-112, and 125
- ^ Penny, 108-110
- ^ Penny, 113
- ^ Penny, 131
References
Media related to Marco Marziale at Wikimedia Commons
- ISBN 1-85709-908-7