Bernardino Parenzano

1450 – 1500

Bernardino Parenzano (Parentino), Italian painter of Istrian origin with is highly unusual style. Active in Mantua and Padua (though he cannot be identified with the monk and prophet of the same name [1437-1531], as was once thought), his work reveals the influence of Mantegna together with some elements drawn from Ferrarese painting. He had a period in Venice. In 1496 he was appointed to the Gonzaga Courtin Mantua (including the decoration of the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este). His work is characterized by a care for detail, perhaps exaggerated, and by miniaturistic tendencies in a Northern European manner that find expression in a crystalline and metallic linearity. The angular, skeletal landscape, bathed in a leaden light and ruthlessly cleared so that it looks devastated, creates a sense of anguish in its snapshot-like fixity, as if the events were taking place in a human terrarium from which all the air has been evacuated.

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