Pietà

religious

It is already clear in this, his first definitely dated work, that Girolamo Romanino, like Lotto and Savoldo, was reluctant to enter fully into the tradition of Venetian figurative art. The panel was painted for the Chapel of the Holy Passion in the old church of San Lorenzo in Brescia and in it we can see Romanino's predilection for Titian's sonorously rich colour transposed onto a plane of popular narrative strengthened by a romantic, imaginative pathos. Against the background of a landscape which itself seems constricted in its atmosphere of profound anguish, the figures of the foreground seem to float to the surface in sharply cadenced groupings painted in timbres of a blazing quality.

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About the Artist

Girolamo Romanino

1484 – 1559

Romanino (Girolamo Romani) was an Italian painter influenced by the Venetian school. He lived in Brescia, near Milan, but travelled extensively in Northern Italy. His early training was in Venice where he was influenced by Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian, as is evident in his Coronation of the Virgin with Saints painted for the church of Santa Giustina in Padua. He painted mainly religious subjects which include a Pietà (1510) his earliest dated work (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice). Echoes of Lotto 's work are present in his Virgin and Child in San Francesco in Brescia. He worked with Pordenone in 1519-20 on the decoration of the Duomo in Cremona and, after returning to Brescia, with Moretto he explored Caravaggio 's strong sense of naturalism and dramatic lighting, as is clear in the Supper at Emmaus and the Nativity in the Pinacoteca Tosini-Martinengo in Brescia. Basic to an understanding of Romanino's style are the frescoes in Pisogne, including the Crucifixion in Santa Maria della Neve and the secular frescoes in the Buonconsiglio Castle in Trent, painted in 1532 with lively representations of everyday life animated by a genuine popular sensibility.

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