MARCONI, ROCCO. - Painter, probably born in Treviso and died in Venice shortly before 13 May 1529. The earliest information concerning his activity dates from 1504; an altarpiece in SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, depicting the Redeemer between Sts. Andrew and Peter, bears his name.
The work that gained him the greatest renown, of which there are some dozen replicas (in Venice, Brescia, Rome, and Berlin) and countless copies, is the rich half-length composition of Christ and the Adulteress (the most vivid example is that preserved in the former Royal Palace in Venice). Besides a St. John the Baptist between Sts. Peter, Paul, Mark, and Jerome, in S. Cassiano in Venice, the Deposition in the Accademia in Venice is noteworthy, also for the clarity of its landscape background; it is held to have been inspired, if not partly executed, by Giovanni Bellini, of whom M. was almost certainly a pupil. He was not insensitive to Giorgione’s great chromatic reform, but his varied and pleasing tones are closer rather to those of Palma il Vecchio. In compositional and formal respects, M. displays a certain weak conventionality and inconsistency of stylistic approach.