Sunday, June 12, 2022

Gianfrancesco Caroto (ca. 1480-1555) - Verona

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Portrait of a Lady
before 1555
oil on panel
private collection

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Portrait of a Lady
ca. 1505-1510
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Portrait of a young Benedictine Monk
before 1555
oil on canvas
Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona

attributed to Gianfrancesco Caroto
Portrait of a Lady as the Magdalen
ca. 1550
oil on panel
private collection

Gianfrancesco Caroto
The Crucifixion (detail)
ca. 1545
oil on canvas
Museo degli affreschi Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Virgin and Child
ca. 1508-1510
oil on panel
Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Tiburtine Sibyl
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Sophonisba with Goblet of Poison
before 1555
oil on panel
Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Three Archangels
ca. 1520
oil on panel
Museo degli affreschi
Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

Gianfrancesco Caroto
St Sebastian
before 1555
oil on panel
Chiesa di Santo Stefano, Venice

Gianfrancesco Caroto
The Annunciation (detail)
before 1555
oil on canvas
private collection

Gianfrancesco Caroto
The Annunciation
before 1555
oil on canvas
private collection

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Christ washing the Feet of the Disciples
ca. 1530
oil on canvas
Museo degli affreschi
Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Pietà della Lacrima
before 1555
oil on canvas
Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona

Gianfrancesco Caroto
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1520
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

"Though Verona was an old tributary of the Serenissima, the main axis of its artistic interest in the sixteenth century was not towards Venice.  Until 1529, the old Liberale da Verona continued to work in the city, persisting in an essentially archaic style that had long since been generated out of Mantuan more than Venetian sources and which in his latest years was faintly touched by an Emilian Raphaelism.  His pupil Niccolò Giolfino held to this latter manner with hardly any meaningful alteration, and at a very inferior level, until 1555.  Liberale's influence and its conservative effect were also felt by the most important native painter of the first half of the century in Verona, Giovanni Francesco Caroto (1480-1555/8).  He first formed a style that was dependent not only on Liberale but on explicitly Mantuan and Mantegnesque models.  Then, in the second decade, he was resident for some years in the Milanese.  His earlier works were deeply attracted to the traditions of later Quattrocento style, and his old-fashioned inclination towards hard, still form and precise description – reinforced by his sojourn in Lombardy – was too strong for any subsequent influence to eradicate.  When in the middle twenties Caroto began to take some cognizance of the Raphaelesque mode that by then was visible in near-by Emilia, it could exact no more than limited concessions from him.  His measure of modernity consisted of an admixture of motifs from Raphaelesque prints, remembered Leonardisms, and a touch of the Mantuan Giulio Romano's smoky chiaroscuro.  Under constant pressure of Emilian example in particular, the classicistic accent of his style increased, but at no sacrifice to his literalness of touch and way of seeing.  In this, his sympathy was with the realist strain that persists also in the Lombard school, to which he looked, more willingly than towards Emilia, in his later work."   

– S.J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (1970)