Caroto - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 544

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

CAROTO. - Two painters bore this name. GIOVANNI FRANCESCO (Verona 1480?-1555?) was the best pupil of Liberale da Verona, and came under the influence of Mantegna, Raffaello, and also Bonifacio veronese and Tiziano.

In 1501 he painted the Madonna Sewing (Estense Picture Gallery); in 1508 the Annunciation, a fresco in S. Girolamo in Verona; in 1514 the Virgin and Child with a Donor (Accademia Virgiliana in Mantova); in 1515 the Pietà (Fontana collection in Torino); in 1527 the Massacre of the Innocents (Carrara Academy in Bergamo); in 1528 the Madonna in Glory and Saints at S. Fermo in Verona; in 1531 the Holy Family and the Resurrection of Lazarus (respectively in the museum and in the archiepiscopal palace of the same city); in 1545 S. Orsola in S. Giorgio in Braida, likewise in Verona.

He was essentially an eclectic: the Madonna Sewing displays the forms of Liberale, weighed down by heavy shadows; the Adoration of Jesus in the Verona museum shows Mantegnesque derivations; the Madonna and Child in the Civic Museum of Verona and the Madonna of S. Fermo adopt the Raphaelesque manner disseminated in Verona by Cavazzola. And Raffaello, through Giulio Romano, reappears in the Holy Family and in the Resurrection of Lazarus.

(photo Anderson)
CARPACCIO, VITTORE - St. George slays the dragon - Venice, church of St. George.

As the years passed, C. again drew close to the Venetians, especially to Bonifacio veronese and Tiziano (Adoration of the Magi and Massacre of the Innocents in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo). He was called the Raffaello of the Veronese School. Considered a Mannerist by some, he was praised by others for his landscapes and for the beauty of his female figures.

GIOVANNI, his brother and assistant (Verona 1488?-1566), reflects the Giorgionesque manner but distinguished himself through linear and luministic effects, as seen in the Madonna with SS. Peter and Paul in San Paolo in Verona and the Madonna with SS. Stephen and Martin and a Donor (Verona Cathedral, 1514). The figures of the man and woman in prayer in the Museo Civico of Verona are grandiose, a painting in which C. demonstrates great chromatic virtuosity.

BIBL.: Venturi, IX, III, Milano 1928, pp. 867-89; W. Arslan, Quattro piccoli contributi per C. G. F., in Critica d'arte, 3 (1938), pp. 75-79; J. Byam Schaw, C., in Old Master Drawings, 14 (1939-40), p. 3; F. Hart, C.'s Meditation on the Passion, in Art Bull., 22 (1940), pp. 25-35; E. G. Treche, Die « Ariadne » der Sammlung Lanz, in Pantheon, 25 (1940), pp. 20-22; B. Berenson, I pittori italiani del Rinascimento, trad. II. di E. Cecchi, 2ª ed., Milano 1942, p. 215. Vincenzo Golzio