Munari, Pellegrino

MUNARI, PELLEGRINO. - Painter, b. in Modena ca. 1465 and d. there, murdered in a brawl, in Dec. 1523. In 1509 he painted in his native city an altarpiece for the hospital of S. Maria dei Battuti, which A. Venturi identified with the pleasing, though cold, Madonna enthroned with Sts. Geminianus and Jerome in the Pinacoteca of Ferrara.

This painting reveals purely Ferrarese characteristics, in part derived from Roberti, but more than anything else taken from Lorenzo Costa, and very noteworthy, in the upper zone, is the affinity of typology with the figures and motifs of the so-called "Strozzi altarpiece," in the National Gallery of London, once attributed to the mythical Ercole Grandi. Around 1510 M. went to Rome, where he is mentioned in the years 1513 and 1515 for works of artisanal painting. He was, according to Vasari, Raphael's assistant in the decoration of the Vatican Logge; his evolution from the manners of the Po valley to the Raphaelesque style is evident in an interesting drawing, now at the Accademia in Venice, which depicts the Madonna enthroned with Sts. Joseph and Dominic and was erroneously attributed to Perin del Vaga. But the most important work he executed in Rome, under the direct influence of Sanzio, is the series of frescoes, inspired by the life of St. James the Greater, in a chapel of S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli. Much decayed or altered, also because of an eighteenth-century restoration, they nevertheless allow one to discern the author's good qualities of color and especially of composition, particularly in the episodes relating to the preaching of the Apostle. After Raphael's death, the Modenese master returned to his native city, where he continued to work for some years; but no certain evidence of this has survived.

Alberto Neppi