LORENZO VENEZIANO. - Painter, documented from 1356 to 1379. He was in Bologna, Padua, and perhaps Treviso.
His dated works include the large polyptych of 1357 at the Gallerie in Venice (Annunciation and Saints), the Marriage of St. Catherine (there), the 1357 polyptych with The Death of the Virgin and Saints in the Cathedral of Vicenza, the precious Handing over of the Keys to St. Peter in the Museo Correr in Venice (1370), a Madonna of 1372 at the Louvre, and others. Among the attributed works is a graceful and rich little polyptych formerly in the Ca' d'Oro in Venice and now in Milan (Brera).
Having certainly formed in the Byzantine-revival climate of the workshop of Maestro Paolo, from whom he derived the solemn layout of the compositions and the typical hieratic quality of many figures, L. subsequently developed a style of his own characterized by a constant pursuit of linear elegance and chromatic preciousness, of a purely Gothic taste, sometimes lapsing into the mannered and the affected. He also underwent the influence of contemporary Bolognese painting and of Tommaso da Modena. Because of its accentuated Byzantinism, a group of paintings comprising a polyptych in S. Giacomo in Bologna, one in the Worcester Museum, and other works has instead been taken away from L. and returned to Maestro Paolo.