MORONE, DOMENICO. – Painter, born in Verona ca. 1442, died there after 1517.
His earliest dated work is the Madonna in the Berlin Museum (1484), to which must be assigned earlier Madonnas in the Musée André in Paris, the National Gallery in Washington, and the Tadini Gallery in Lovere; all these works, together with some hints of Ferrarese influence, display lively Paduan characteristics. These traits appear attenuated ten years later in the large canvas depicting the Gonzaga expelling the Bonacolsi from Mantua, commissioned by Francesco Gonzaga and now in the Ducal Palace of Mantua; in this work the influence of Gentile Bellini is evident. A whole group of panels with stories of St. Thomas, St. Vincent Ferrer, and other saints, scattered among various collections in Europe and America, foreshadows this fruitful period, to which also belong two fragments of a cassone with tournament scenes, now in the National Gallery in London. But this influence is episodic, and in later works the artist returns to his early manner; the frescoes in the Library of St. Bernardino in Verona and those in the Paladon, now in the Verona Museum (1502), indeed repeat his Mantuan origins.
His son FRANCESCO (b. in Verona ca. 1471, d. there 16 May 1529) collaborated with him as early as 1496 in the painting for the church of Romarzzo. From the solemn Crucifixion between the Virgin and St. John in S. Bernardino in Verona (1498) to the altarpiece of the parish church of Soave (1529), his dated paintings are numerous, without which it would be difficult to follow the uniform development of his activity. In his many works, all executed for Verona and its vicinity (among the principal ones the altarpiece of S. Maria in Organo, of 1503; the frescoes in the sacristy of the same church, and those in S. Anastasia and in S. Fermo; the Brera altarpiece, of 1502, and the small panel in the Carrara Gallery in Bergamo, of 1520, etc.), he remains always faithful to the manner learned from his father, softening it according to his temperament with a sense of austere poetry; except on a few occasions when the inevitable Venetian influences are more apparent (Samson and Delilah in the Poldi Pezzoli in Milan).