JEROME OF TREVISO, the Elder. - Painter, b. ca. 1450 and d. ca. 1496. Remembered as belonging to the Pennacchi family, doubts nevertheless persist about his house, all the more so since in his certain works he signs himself only "Hieronymus Tarvisio."
With the loss of the frescoes and the altarpiece that he would have painted in 1470 for the Spineda chapel in S. Niccolò in Treviso, the only work of his youth that reveals him as a follower of the Squarcionesque circle is the St. Jerome (signed and dated) of the Piccinelli collection in 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 in Padua. After the Paduan experience, the painter must have gone to Venice, and Antonellian influences are found in the Pala del fiore of the cathedral of Treviso, dated 1487, to which a small Madonna, signed, formerly in the Weber collection in Hamburg, and another in the Boehler art house in Munich (formerly in Dessau) are close, in which a derivation from Bellinian models is also evident. The influence of Bellini is also present in the Transfiguration of the Accademia in Venice, the upper part of an altarpiece that was destroyed and painted in 1488 for the church of S. Margherita in Treviso. Signed and dated 1493 is the altarpiece from Collalto in Friuli, now in the Venetian Accademia, which, with the Madonna and four saints of the cathedral of Treviso (from S. Vigilio), also shows the decline of the painter's art as he feebly attempts to keep up with the artistic movements of his time.
Bibliography2 works
Gilberto Ronci