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)