The scarcity of biographical information (he is documented in Venice from 1510 onward) and of securely datable paintings makes the chronological ordering of his pictorial production difficult and debated. A Bergamasque by birth, he undoubtedly came under the influence of his fellow native masters connected with the Bellinian circle: Francesco da Santacroce and especially Previtali, retaining their taste for clear and transparent enamel-like colors, sometimes akin to Lotto’s (to the latter is traditionally attributed the altarpiece of St. Peter the Martyr at Alzano, which Longhi assigns to Palma). He also retained their sense of well-defined plastic form. To his youthful period belong, besides the so-called Madonna of Berlin, the Sacred Conversations of Chantilly (the date 1500 is debated), the Borghese Gallery (no. 163), and Leningrad. The influence of Giorgione then acted powerfully on Palma, enriching the texture of his color and accentuating his taste for limpid and tranquil landscapes, consonant with his art, which constantly expresses an idyllic serenity, a contemplative calm tinged with sensuality: from the Scenetta pastorale in Philadelphia to the Nymphs in Frankfurt (Städel Institute), to the late Meeting of Jacob and Rachel in Dresden. With the Sacred Conversations, Palma created an iconographic scheme that enjoyed wide diffusion in the Venetian school and which he himself repeated in numerous variations, from the youthful ones in Bergamo, the Borghese Gallery, Vienna, to the more animated and resounding later versions.
PALMATA
PALMAS - Interior of the Cathedral (20th century).
of Munich, the Accademia in Venice, the Louvre, and the Museum of Naples: in the latter there is a manneristic dilation of contours suggesting Pordenone, while examples of a tendency toward precise definition of form are found in the Adam and Eve in the Brunswick Museum (thought to date from 1512 but rather late) and in the Venuses in Dresden and Cambridge. A celebrated masterpiece is the altarpiece of St. Barbara in Santa Maria Formosa in Venice, erroneously considered a youthful work, in which the serene solemnity of the figures is clothed in warm and compact color, with chiaroscural modeling that reflects Titian’s researches. Palma exalted feminine beauty in a series of portraits in which warm and sensual color contrasts with a vacuous coldness of expression: among the best known are the Bella (Rothschild collection, Paris), the so-called Violante in Vienna (dated by Longhi to Titian), the Three Sisters in Dresden, and others in Berlin, Milan (Poldi Pezzoli), etc. Among other portraits, the Giorgionesque Poet in the National Gallery is very fine, and notable for their simplicity of composition are those in the Querini Stampalia collection in Venice (they formed part of a group of 68 works, mostly unfinished, listed in Palma’s will of 1528). Also cited are the altarpiece of the parish church of Zerman (Treviso), dating before 1511; the Assumption and St. Peter from the Accademia, and the St. Lawrence and Saints from Santa Maria dell’Orto in Venice; and the Adoration of the Magi in the Brera, dating after 1525.