Italian painter. He worked in Venice, the Veneto and Lombardy in the
early decades of the 16th century. Knowledge of him is based largely
on the signatures, dates and inscriptions on his works. His early
paintings are small devotional pictures; later he became a
fashionable portraitist. His earliest dated painting, a Virgin and
Child (1502; Venice, priv. col., see Berenson, i, pl. 537), is
signed ‘Bartolomeo half-Venetian and half-Cremonese’. The
inscription probably refers to his parentage, but it also suggests
the eclectic nature of his development. This painting is clearly
dependent on similar works by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop, but
in a slightly later Virgin and Child (1505; Bergamo, Gal. Accad.
Cararra) the sharp modelling of the Virgin’s headdress and the
insistent linear accents in the landscape indicate Bartolomeo’s
early divergence from Giovanni’s depiction of light and space. An
inscription on his Virgin and Child of 1510 (Milan, Ercolani Col.)
states that he was a pupil of Gentile Bellini, an assertion
supported by the tightness and flatness of his early style. The
influence of Giovanni is still apparent in the composition of the
Circumcision (1506; Paris, Louvre), although the persistent stress
on surface patterns and the linear treatment of drapery and outline
is closer to Gentile. Bartolomeo’s experience as a painter at the
Este court in Ferrara (1505–8) probably encouraged the decorative
emphasis of his style. In the half-length Portrait of a Man (c.
1510; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam) the flattened form of the fashionably
dressed sitter is picked out against a deep red curtain so that the
impression of material richness extends across the entire picture
surface. The precise layout and meticulous attention to costume
detail are also characteristic of Bartolomeo’s style in sacred
subjects.
Ritratto Di Donna Ebrea Con Gli Attributi Di Joele
Discuss Art
Please note: site admin does not answer any questions. This is our readers discussion only.
