ANTONIANUM: v. ISTITUTI DI STUDI SUPERIORI. ANTONIAZZO ROMANO. - Painter, b. in Rome, d. there after 1508. His formation took place through contact with the Umbrian and Tuscan painters summoned to Rome by papal patronage. Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pinturicchio and above all Melozzo da Forlì fundamentally formed A.'s manner. Although criticism has not yet fully clarified his personality, A. is of notable importance for having determined the Roman pictorial environment of the Quattrocento, since he assimilated the Roman tradition and translated it into composedly solemn forms, and made it an element of style that he transmitted to his numerous workshop. This workshop, operating extensively in Lazio and in the neighboring Umbrian lands, produced works that were stylistically uneven, but was characterized as a whole by the aim of monumentality of its master. The attribution of many of the numerous works that go under his name is uncertain. Among the few signed ones, the oldest to have come down to us is the Triptych in the Quadreria civica of Rieti, dated 1464, in which a certain imbalance between the central group, adhering through the harshness of its line and the detachment of its planes to the manner of Gozzoli, and the two side panels of freer workmanship suggests two phases of execution. Greater mastery in the layout of the composition is found in the triptych of Subiaco, signed and dated 1467, in which the simplification of expressive means works to the advantage of the conquest of volume. Perhaps A., under the mediated or direct influence of Piero della Francesca, already felt the need for a geometric rigor, which he expressed in the frescoes of slightly later date (c. 1470) in S. Maria della Consolazione in Rome, whose fragments have recently been rediscovered in situ. Toward 1480 A. collaborated with Melozzo da Forlì on the decoration of the Vatican Library, and was tesca. Within the sphere of A.'s school there also belongs the cycle of frescoes in the oratory of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Tivoli. Of the paintings executed by A. with his workmen in the Castle of Bracciano (1491), of which he himself speaks in a letter to Prince Virginio Orsini, nothing has remained untouched by restorations. - See Pl. CXXI.

Bibliography12 works

BIBL.: For the catalogue of works, cf.: A. Venturi, Storia dell'Arte Italiana, VII, 2, Milan 1913, pp. 257-86 (with previous bibl.); R. van Marle, Italian Schools, XV, 1934, pp. 244-304; B. Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento, trans. E. Cecchi, Milan 1936, pp. 22-25. For the critical evaluation of A., cf. the fundamental study by R. Lonchi, In favore di A. R., in Vita artistica, (1927), pp. 226-33. Of the vast bibliography on the numerous works of A., certain or attributed, one should compare, besides the studies cited by Venturi: A. Rossi, Le opere d'arte del Monastero di Tor de' Specchi in Roma, in Boll. d'Arte 1907, fasc. VIII, pp. 4-22; fasc. XI, pp. 1-12; and: P. Lugano, Le antiche storie di S. Francesca Romana nell'Oratorio di Tor de' Specchi, in L'Illustrazione Vaticana, 1934, pp. 615-18. - G. Cantalamessa, L'Annunciazione al Pantheon, in Boll. d'Arte, 1909, pp. 281-287; F. M. Perkins, Dipinti della Collezione Piatti, in Romagna d'Arte, 1911, p. 6; id., Tre dipinti di A. R., in Romagna d'Arte umbra, 1911, pp. 36-38; A. Sacchetti Sassetti, A., Marc'Antonio e Giulio Aquili a Rieti, in L'Arte, 1916, pp. 88-98; V. Mariani, Un dipinto di A. R. nella chiesa di S. Nicola in Carrere, Rome 1929; V. Pacifici, Un ciclo d'affreschi di Melozzo da Forlì, in Atti e memorie della Società Tiburtina di storia e d'arte, 1931-32, pp. 161-80; On this cycle, cf. also: A. Rossi, Opere d'arte a Tivoli, in L'Arte, 1904, pp. 146-57; E. Gerlini, Un dipinto antoniozzerico nella chiesa dello Spirito Santo dei Napoletani, in Roma, 1941, offprint from fasc. X, pp. 3-5.

Elsa Gerlini

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Antonianum

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