IL

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 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 " 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 fellow-pupil with Titian under Giovanni Bellini is incorrect . The 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-painting is concerned he was barely inferior to Titian in breadth, pulpiness and tone; and he was for a while the rival of that great painter in public regard . The two were open enemies, and Licinio would sometimes affect to wear arms while he was painting . He excelled Giorgione in light and shade and in the effect of relief, and was distinguished in perspective and in portraits; he was equally at home in fresco and in oil-colour . He executed many 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 Ferrara to that court; here soon after-wards, in 1539, he died, not without suspicion of 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 principal scholars were Bernardino Licinio, named Il Sacchiense, his son-in-law Pomponio Amalteo, and Giovanni Maria Calderari . The following may be named among Pordenone's works: the picture of " S Luigi 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 " Annunciation," at Udine, regarded by Vasari as the artist's masterpiece, now damaged by restoration . In Hampton Court is a duplicate work, the " Painter and his Family "; and in Burghley House are two 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 .