MUNARI, PELLEGRINO. — Painter, born in Modena ca. 1465 and died there, assassinated in a brawl in December 1523. In 1509 he painted an altarpiece in his hometown for the hospital of S. Maria dei Battuti, which A. Venturi identified with the pleasant, if somewhat cold, *Madonna in trono e i ss. Geminiano e Girolamo* in the Pinacoteca of Ferrara.
This painting clearly shows characteristics typical of Ferrara, partly influenced by Ercole Roberti, but more so derived from Lorenzo Costa, and it is particularly noteworthy in the upper zone the affinity of typology with the figures and motifs of the so-called “pala Strozzi” in the National Gallery in 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 minor painting work. According to Vasari, he was an assistant to Raphael in the decoration of the Vatican Logge; his evolution from Lombard styles to the Raphaelesque manner is evident in an interesting drawing now in the Accademia in Venice, depicting the Madonna in trono with the saints Joseph and Dominic and 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. Now much deteriorated or altered, also due to an 18th-century restoration, they nonetheless reveal the artist’s good chromatic and above all compositional qualities, especially in the episodes relating to the Apostle’s preaching. After Raphael’s death, the Modenese master returned to his homeland, where he continued to work for a few years, though no certain traces of his activity remain.