PAOLO VENEZIANO. - Painter, b. at the end of the 1200s, d. in Venice between 1358 and 1362.
The painting of P., the strongest artist of the Venetian 14th century, as he has come to be defined through the work of recent criticism, represents the last and most evocative affirmation of a Byzantinism so genuine as to suggest a journey of his to Constantinople.
To the persistent Byzantine foundation, which manifests itself in the precious enamel of color, enriched with gold highlights, in the courtly solemnity and in the rhythmic equilibrium of the
PAOLO VENEZIANO - The Virgin and Child - Venice, Galleria dell'Accademia.
compositions, other cultural elements remain always subordinate in his paintings — Gothic and Romagnol elements, come from the mainland and which are to be assigned preferably to the intervention of the numerous collaborators whom the extremely industrious master gathered around himself, forming a veritable workshop.
The first signed and dated work is the Dormitio Virginis of 1333 (Museo di Vicenza), but the altarpiece of St. Leo at Dignano, which is of 1321, and a Coronation of the Virgin, formerly in the Dal Zotto collection, of 1323, are unanimously attributed to P. To the decade 1330-40 belong the evocative antependium in St. James at Bologna and the related four Saints of the Museo di Brescia, formerly assigned, together with another polyptych of the Museo di Worcester, to Lorenzo Veneziano. Of 1345 is the Cover of the golden altarpiece in St. Mark's, a fundamental work, signed by P. and by his sons Luca and Giovanni, restored to full appreciation by a recent restoration. To the following years belongs a group of works once attributed to Stefano Plebano or to the "Master of Pirano" (van Marle) and which the most recent studies (Vavalà; Fiocco) have returned to P. and to his immediate collaborators: a polyptych in St. Martin at Chioggia (1348), a triptych of 1353 (Madonna in the Louvre, Saints in the Museums of Ajaccio and Toulouse), a polyptych at Sanseverino and another at Pirano, of 1355. Of 1347 is a signed Madonna at Carpineta (Marche) and of 1358 is the Coronation of the Virgin now in the Frick collection in New York, signed together with his son Giovanni. Among the numerous other works attributed with certainty to P. there are cited, at the Accademia of Venice, a Madonna of the primitive period and the polyptych, now reconstituted, with the Coronation of the Madonna (formerly at Brera) and scenes from the Life of Christ; the lunette of Doge Dandolo (1339) in the church of the Frari of the same city; two Stories of St. Nicholas formerly in the Chiesa collection, etc. Discussed is the authenticity of the signature in a Vision of Augustus (1358) in the Museum of Stuttgart, which recent criticism tends to deny to P. (Longhi: Jacobello Bonomo).
Bibliography4 works
mizie su maestro P., in Dedalo, 11 (1931), p. 877; S. Bettini, Aggiunte a maestro P., in Boll. d'Arte del Minist. della P. I., 1934-35, p. 474; id., Pitture cretesi-veneziam... nel Museo di Ravenna, Ravenna 1940, passim: R. Longhi, Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana, Firenze 1940, pp. 6, 44; L. Coletti, I primitivi, III, Novara 1947, p. 50; N. di Carpegna, La coperta della pala d'oro di P. V., in Boll. d'Arte del Minist. della P. I., 1951, p. 55.