Carlo Crivelli (1435 – 1495)
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Carlo Crivelli was a Venetian Renaissance or Quattrocento painter. Crivelli was born around 1435 in Venice. The only dates that can with certainty be given about his life as a painter are 1468 and 1493: these are, respectively, the earliest and the latest years signed on his pictures–the former on an altar-piece in the church of San Silvestro at Massa near Fermo, and the latter on a picture in the Oggioni collection in Milan.
Though born in Venice, Crivelli seems to have worked chiefly in Le Marche of Ancona, and especially in and near Ascoli; there are only two pictures in Venice, in the church of San Sebastiano. He is said to have studied under Jacobello del Fiore, who was painting as late at any rate as 1436; at that time Crivelli was probably only a boy. He also studied at the school of Vivarini in Venice, then left Venice, initially, it is generally believed, for Padua, where he is believed to have worked in the workshop of Francesco Squarcione and then for Zara in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia, but then a Venetian territory) in 1459, following legal trouble after he was sentenced to prison for six months for having an affair with a married woman, Tarsia Cortese, the wife of a sailor.
The artist always signed himself by a variant of “Carlo Crivelli of Venice, e.g. Carolus Crivellus Venetus; from 1490 he added the title “Miles”, by then having been knighted (Cavaliere) by Ferdinand II of Naples. He painted in tempera only, despite the increasing popularity of oil painting during his life-time. Unlike the naturalistic trends arising from Florence at the same time, Crivelli’s style still echoes the Byzantine sensibility. The urban settings are jewel-like, and full of elaborate allegorical detail.
He introduced agreeable landscape backgrounds, and was particularly partial to giving fruits and flowers as accessories, often in pendant festoons, which are a characteristic of the Paduan studio of Francesco Squarcione, where Crivelli may have worked. The National Gallery, London is well supplied with examples of Crivelli; the Annunciation with St Emidius, possibly his most famous painting, and the Beato Ferretti (of the same family as Pope Pius IX) in religious ecstasy, may be specified. Another of his principal pictures is in San Francesco di Matelica; in Berlin is a Madonna and Saints (1491); in the Vatican Gallery a Dead Christ, and in the Brera of Milan the Madonna of the Candle. There are also examples of his work in several major US galleries.
Despite his Venetian birth, his paintings have a linear Umbrian quality. Crivelli is a painter of marked individuality; unlike Giovanni Bellini, his contemporary, his works are not “soft”, but are clear and definite in contour and with an astounding attention to detail. His use of “trompe l’oeil,” often compared to painters of the Northern Renaissance such as Rogier van der Weyden, includes raised objects, such as tears and “jewels” made of gesso. Commissioned by the Franciscans and Dominicans of Ascoli, Crivelli’s work is exclusively religious in nature. His paintings consist largely of Madonna and Child images, Pietas, and the by-then-old-fashioned altarpiece known as the polyptych. Often filled with images of suffering, such as gaping wounds in Christ’s hands and side and the mouths of mourners twisted in agony, Crivelli’s work appropriately fulfills the spiritual needs of his patrons. These ultra-realistic, sometimes disturbing, qualities have often led critics to label Crivelli’s paintings “grotesque,” much like his fellow Northern Italian painter, Cosimo Tura.
Few artists seem to have worked with more uniformity of purpose, or more forthright command of his materials and this was recognized by the number of prestigious commissions he was awarded. It is possible that Carlo was of the same family as the painters as Donato Crivelli (who was working in 1459, and was also a scholar of Jacobello) – Vittorio Crivelli, with whom he occasionally collaborated, was his younger brother. Pietro Alemanno, a painter who had traveled to Le Marche from Germany/Austria) was his pupil/collaborator.
Carlo Crivelli died in the Marche (probably Ascoli Piceno) around 1495. His work fell out of favor following his death and he is not mentioned in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (which is notably Florence-centric). He had something of a revival, especially in the UK, during the time of the pre-Raphaelite painters, several of whom, including Edward Burne-Jones were admirers of Crivelli. Admiration for his work declined with the decline of the pre-Raphaelites during the Modernist period, but recent writings on his work and a re-hanging of his work in the National Gallery, London, are again bringing him more attention.
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