MORAZZONE, PIER FRANCESCO MAZZUCCHELLI, so called. — Born in Morazzone, near Varese, in 1573, according to an unconfirmed eighteenth-century anonymous catalogue; died in Piacenza in 1626. In the Adone, Marino considered him, together with Serrano and Boccaccini, one of the foremost Milanese painters.
He worked in Rome; but of the Roman works, only the frescoes in the church of S. Silvestro remain, characterized by a gentle beauty, chromatic suggestiveness, and exact naturalism which, in addition to recalling the Sienese Baroque milieu, preserve traces of an earlier Lombard training. In Venice he is said to have studied Tintoretto; from 1602 to 1605 he stayed in Varallo, engaged on the frescoes of the chapel
of the Ascent to Calvary, then in Milan, where he executed sacred and secular works, most of which have been lost. In 1608 he decorated the processional banner of Como cathedral, still extant, and in 1609 dated in Varese the frescoes of the chapel of the Flagellation at the S. Monte; he then worked in Varallo, with some interruptions, until 1617. From 1618 dates a small painting in Milan cathedral, and from 1611 the altar of the Magdalene in S. Vittore at Varese; between 1615 and 1617, in the same church, he painted the chapel of the Rosary, his masterpiece. In 1616 he was at Orta, in 1617 at the Carthusian monastery of Pavia, and in 1620 completed the decoration of the chapel of the Good Death in Novara. His death interrupted the frescoes of the vault of Piacenza cathedral, begun in 1625. M. also worked in Mantua and Turin; little information remains about his final years. He collaborated with Cerano and Procaccini on the painting of the Martyrdom of s. Giustina and s. Secondo in Brera. He felt the influence of Caravaggesque painting but remained fundamentally an eclectic.