Online Encyclopedia

IL PORDENONE (1483-1539)

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V22, Page 102 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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PORDENONE (1483-1539)  , an eminent painter of the Venetian school, whose correct name was Giovanni Antonio Licinio, or Licino . He was commonly named Il Pordenone from having been born in 1483 at Corticelli, a
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village near Pordenone (q.v.) in Italy . 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 "
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Antonius Portunaensis," or " De Portunaonis." He was created a cavaliere by Charles V . As a painter Licinio vias a scholar of Pellegrino da S . Daniele, but the leading influence which governed his style was that of Giorgione; the popular story that he was a
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fellow-pupil with Titian under Giovanni Bellini is incorrect . The
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district about Pordenone had been somewhat fertile in capable painters; but Licinio excelled them all in invention and design, and more especially in the powers of a vigorous chiaroscurist and flesh painter . Indeed, so far as mere flesh-
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painting is concerned he was barely inferior to Titian in breadth, pulpiness and tone; and he was for a while the
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rival of that
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great painter in public regard . The two were open enemies, and Licinio would sometimes affect to
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wear arms while he was painting . He excelled Giorgione in
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light and shade and in the effect of
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relief, and was distinguished in perspective and in portraits; he was equally at home in fresco and in oil-colour . He executed many
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works in Pordenone and elsewhere in Friuli, and in Cremona and Venice; at one time he settled in Piacenza, where is one of his most celebrated church pictures, " St Catherine disputing with the Doctors in Alexandria "; the figure of St Paul in connexion with this picture is his own portrait . He was formally invited by Duke Hercules II. of
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Ferrara to that court; here soon after-wards, in 1539, he died, not without suspicion of
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poison .

His latest 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, and his morals were not unexceptionable . Three of his
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principal scholars were Bernardino Licinio, named Il Sacchiense, his son-in-law Pomponio
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Amalteo, and Giovanni Maria Calderari . The following may be named among Pordenone's works: the picture of " S
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Luigi
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Giustiniani and other Saints," originally in S Maria dell' Orto, Venice; a " Madonna and Saints " (both of these in the Venice academy); the " Woman taken in Adultery," in the Berlin museum; the "
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Annunciation," at
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Udine, regarded by Vasari as the artist's masterpiece, now damaged by restoration . In Hampton Court is a duplicate
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work, the " Painter and his
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Family "; and in Burghley House are two
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fine pictures now assigned to Pordenone—the " Finding of Moses " and the " Adoration of the Kings." These used to be attributed to Titian and to Bassano respectively .

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