Palma Vecchio

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Palma Vecchio
Imaginative portrait, c. 1648
Born
Jacomo Nigretti de Lavalle[citation needed]

c. 1480
Died30 June 1528(1528-06-30) (aged 47–48)
Venice, Republic of Venice
NationalityVenetian
Known forPainting
MovementHigh Renaissance
Virgin and Child, Saints Catharine and Celestine, John the Baptist and Barbara, 1520–22

Palma Vecchio (c. 1480 – 30 July 1528), born Jacopo Palma,[

Venetian painter of the Italian High Renaissance. He is called Palma Vecchio in English and Palma il Vecchio in Italian ("Palma the Elder") to distinguish him from Palma il Giovane
("Palma the Younger"), his great-nephew, who was also a painter.

Life

Palma was born at

Vasari; his date of birth is calculated from this).[3] His stock has been rising somewhat in recent decades, as more attributions are removed from Giorgione and Titian and given to him; his "sheer painterly capacity" in the handling of paint and color is extremely fine.[1]

He painted the new pastoral mythologies and half-length portraits, often of idealized beauties who, then as now, were enticingly suspected of being portraits of Venice's famous courtesans. He also painted religious pieces, in particular developing the sacra conversazione (the Virgin and Child with a group of saints and perhaps donors) in a horizontal form with a landscape background. In other, secular, groups something seems to occurring between the figures, though exactly what is unclear. All these types of painting were patronized by wealthy Venetians for their homes.[4]

He also painted traditional vertical altarpieces for churches inside Venice and around the Venetian territories on the mainland such as the Presentation of the Virgin Altarpiece now in Serina. However, he was not commissioned to paint a main altar in Venice until 1525, at Sant'Elena, Venice (now Brera, Milan). He was quick to absorb influences from other parts of Italy, sometimes copying poses from Michelangelo, and taking influence from Central Italy from about 1515 into the 1520's.[2]

Palma's mature work from the 1520's shows a "

Giovanni Busi.[2]

Works

Diana and Callisto, or Nymphs Bathing, 1525-28[7]

His paintings frequently feature his (so-called) daughter Violante, of whom Titian was said to be enamoured. Famous works by Palma include a composition of six paintings in the Venetian church of

Dresden Gallery
, representing three sisters seated in the open air; it is frequently named The Three Graces. A third work, discovered in Venice in 1900, is a portrait supposed to represent Violante.

Other leading examples are: the Last Supper in the

.

It has recently been realized that Titian completed a sacra conversazione by Palma, probably after his death; he had probably done the same for Giorgione after his death. He overpainted two of the figures, and made changes to the background. It is now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.[8]

Gallery

Notes

  1. ^ a b Freedberg, 160
  2. ^ a b c d e Rylands
  3. ^ Rylands; Freedberg, 160-163, 323; Steer, 103
  4. ^ Rylands; Steer, 101-103; Freedberg, 160-165; RC, 212-213; Jaffé, 41
  5. ^ Freedberg, 337
  6. ^ Freedberg, 160-165, 334-337
  7. ^ Philip Rylands in Jane Martineau (ed), The Genius of Venice, 1500–1600, pp. 197-198, 1983, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
  8. ^ Jaffé, 114, 116
  9. ^ Steer, 114-116

References

Further reading

Media related to Paintings by Palma il Vecchio at Wikimedia Commons

  • Rylands, Philip, Palma Vecchio, 1988, Cambridge, the standard monograph in English