PAOLO VENEZIANO. - Painter, born at the end of the 13th century, died in Venice between 1358 and 1362.
The painting of P., the strongest artist of 14th-century Venice as defined by recent criticism, represents the final and most evocative assertion of a Byzantinism so authentic 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 aulic solemnity and in the rhythmic balance of the
PAOLO VENEZIANO - The Virgin and Child - Venice, Galleria dell'Accademia.
compositions, other cultural elements—Gothic and from Romagna, derived from the mainland and preferably to be assigned to the intervention of the numerous assistants whom the master, who was extremely active, gathered around himself, forming a veritable workshop—always remain subordinate in his paintings.
His first signed and dated work is the Dormitio Virginis of 1333 (Museum of Vicenza), but the polyptych of S. Leone in Dignano, which dates to 1321, and a Coronation of the Virgin, formerly in the Dal Zotto collection, dating to 1323, are unanimously attributed to P. Belonging to the decade 1330–40 are the suggestive frontal in S. Giacomo in Bologna and the related Four Saints in the Museum of Brescia, previously assigned, together with another polyptych in the Worcester Museum, to Lorenzo Veneziano. Dating to 1345 is the Cover of the Pala d'Oro in S. Marco, a fundamental work signed by P. and his sons Luca and Giovanni, brought back to full appreciation by a recent restoration. From the following years is a group of works once attributed to Stefano Plebano or the "Master of Piran" (van Marle) and which recent studies (Vavalà; Fiocco) have returned to P. and his immediate collaborators: a polyptych in S. Martino in Chioggia (1348), a triptych of 1353 (Madonna in the Louvre, Saints in the Museums of Ajaccio and Toulouse), a polyptych in Sanseverino, and another in Piran, from 1355. Dating to 1347 is a signed Madonna in Carpineta (Marches) and from 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. are mentioned, at the Accademia in Venice, a Madonna from the primitive period and the polyptych, now reconstituted, with the Coronation of the Madonna (formerly in Brera) and scenes from the Life of Christ; the lunette of Doge Dandolo (1339) in the church of the Frari in the same city; two Stories of St. Nicholas formerly in the Chiesa collection, etc. The authenticity of the signature in a Vision of Augustus (1358) in the Stuttgart Museum is disputed, which recent criticism tends to deny to P. (Longhi: Jacobello Bonomo).
