GIROLAMO da TREVISO, the Elder. - Painter, born ca. 1450 and died ca. 1496. Remembered as belonging to the Pennacchi family, doubts nevertheless remain concerning his surname, all the more so since in his certain works he signs himself only “Hieronymus Tarvisio.”
The frescoes and altarpiece which he is said to have painted in 1470 for the Spineda chapel in S. Niccolò at Treviso having been lost, the sole work of his youth, revealing him as a follower of the Squarcionesque milieu, is the St. Jerome (signed and dated) in the Piccinelli collection at Seriate near Bergamo. Similar characteristics are found in the Pietà of Brera and in the fresco, recently attributed to him, with the same subject, in the church of the Eremitani at Padua. After his Paduan experience, the painter must have gone to Venice, and Antonellesque influences are found in the Pala del fiore in the cathedral of Treviso, dated 1487, to which may be compared a signed little Madonna, formerly in the Weber collection at Hamburg, and another in the Boehler art gallery in Munich (formerly at Dessau), in which a derivation from Bellinian models is likewise evident. Bellini’s influence is also present in the Transfiguration of the Accademia in Venice, the upper part of an altarpiece now destroyed and painted in 1488 for the church of S. Margherita at Treviso. Signed and dated 1493 is the altarpiece from Collalto in Friuli, now in the Venetian Accademia, which, together with the Madonna and four saints in the cathedral of Treviso (from S. Vigilio), also shows the decline of the painter’s art, as he attempts feebly to keep pace with the artistic movements of his time.