Il Pordenone (1483-1539)
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Il Pordenone, by name of Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, was an Italian painter of the Venetian School, active during the Renaissance. Vasari, his main biographer, identifies him as Giovanni Antonio Licinio.
He was commonly named “Il Pordenone” from having been born in 1483 at Corticelli, a village near Pordenone in Friuli. He ultimately dropped the name of Licinio, having quarrelled with his brothers, one of whom had wounded him in the hand. After this incident, he then called himself Regillo, or De Regillo. Others say he once took up his maternal name of Cuticelli. His signature runs Antonius Portunaensis, or De Portunaonis. He was deemed a cavalier by Charles V.
As a painter, Pordenone was a scholar of Pellegrino da San Daniele but a leading influence on his style was Giorgione. The popular story that he was a fellow pupil with Titian under Giovanni Bellini is false. The district about Pordenone had been somewhat fertile in capable painters, but Pordenone is the best-known, a vigorous chiaroscurist and flesh painter. The 1911 Britannica states that “so far, as mere flesh-painting is concerned, he was barely inferior to Titian in breadth, pulpiness and tone”. The two were rivals for a time, and Licinio would sometimes affect to wear arms while he was painting. He excelled in portraits and was equally at home in fresco and in oil color. He executed many works in Pordenone and elsewhere in Friuli, Cremona, and Venice. At one time, he settled in Piacenza, where one of his most celebrated church pictures, St. Catherine Disputing with the Doctors in Alexandria is located. The figure of St. Paul, in connection with this picture, is his own portrait.
He was invited by Duke Ercole II of Ferrara to court and soon afterwards, he died in Ferrara in 1539, not without suspicion of poison. His later 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.
Three of his principal pupils were Bernardino Licinio, named Il Sacchiense, his son-in-law Pomponio Amalteo, and Giovanni Maria Calderari.
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