PALMA THE ELDER (Giacomo Negretti, Called). - Painter, b. at Serina around 1480, d. at Venice in 1528.
The scarcity of biographical information (from 1510 he is documented at Venice) and of paintings that can be securely dated makes the chronological ordering of his pictorial output difficult and disputed. A native of Bergamo, he undoubtedly came under the influence of the masters of his own region, linked to the circle of Bellini: Francesco da Santacroce and especially Previtali, and he always retained their taste for a color of clear and transparent enamels, at times akin to that of Lotto (to the latter is traditionally assigned the altarpiece of St. Peter Martyr at Alzano, which Longhi gives to P.), and for a well-defined plastic form. To the youthful period belong, besides the Carpaccio-like Madonna of Berlin, the Holy Conversations of Chantilly (the date 1500 is disputed), of the Borghese Gallery (no. 163), of Leningrad. The influence of Giorgione then acts powerfully on P., making the substance of his color richer and accentuating his taste for limpid and placid landscapes, in keeping with his art, which constantly expresses an idyllic serenity, a contemplative calm veined with sensuality: one moves from the Pastoral Scene of Philadelphia to the Nymphs of Frankfurt (Städel Inst.), to the late Meeting of Jacob and Rachel of Dresden. With the Holy Conversations P. created an iconographic scheme that had the widest diffusion in the Venetian school and that he himself repeated with very numerous variants, from the youthful ones of Bergamo, of the Borghese Gallery, of Vienna, to the more animated and ringing of Monaco, of the Venice Academy, of the Louvre, of the Naples Museum: in the latter there is a mannerist dilation of contours that calls to mind Pordenone, while examples of a tendency toward the precise definition of forms are found in the Adam and Eve of the Brunswick Museum (believed to be of 1512 but rather late) and in the Venuses of Dresden and Cambridge. A celebrated masterpiece is the Altar of St. Barbara in S. Maria Formosa in Venice, erroneously held to be a youthful work, in which the serene solemnity of the figures is clothed in a warm and compact color, with a chiaroscuro modeling that shows the influence of Titian's researches. P. exalted female beauty in a series of portraits in which a vacuous coldness of expression is set against the warm and sensual color: among the best known are the Bella (Rothschild collection in Paris), the so-called Violante of Vienna (dated by Longhi to Titian), the Three Sisters of Dresden, and others in Berlin, Milan (Poldi Pezzoli), etc. Among the other portraits, the Giorgionesque Poet of the National Gallery is very beautiful, and those of the Querini Stampalia collection in Venice are notable for simplicity of composition (they were part of a group of 68 works, most of them unfinished, listed in P.'s will of 1528). Mention is also made of the altarpiece of the parish church of Zerman (Treviso), earlier than 1511; the Assumption and the St. Peter of the Academy, and the St. Lawrence and saints of S. Maria dell'Orto in Venice; the Adoration of the Magi of Brera, later than 1525.
Bibliography8 works
Nolfo di Carpegna