PELLIPARIO, NICOLA. - Painter of majolica, b. at Casteldurante (Urbania) no later than 1480, d. before 1547.

After working in his native city and in Fabriano, he moved between 1515 and 1520 to Urbino, where, together with his sons, he founded the celebrated Fontana workshop. The art of P., perhaps the greatest of the masters of the so-called "fine style," is distinguished by its free and elegant drawing, by the harmony of its colors, and by its feeling for landscape. In his subjects, which are much varied, he draws with complete freedom on Italian and German woodcuts and engravings; only in his mature period, in which he passed from a preference for light colors bound together by a dominant turquoise note to fuller tones with a prevalence of yellow-orange, did he tend to copy Marcantonio's prints faithfully. To P. is also attributed the formulation of certain typical ornamental motifs of the Durantine school. Famous among the many "services" executed by P. and scattered among many museums are that of the Museo Correr in Venice (ca. 1515; other pieces in Oxford and Amsterdam) and the later one for Isabella d'Este Gonzaga (20 pieces in Bologna, London and elsewhere). Mention should also be made of: the Plate of the Emperor in Leningrad (1521), the one with the Martyrdom of St. Catherine in the Museo Nazionale in Florence, a Presentation in the Temple, lustered by Mastro Giorgio, in the Museo di Bologna, and numerous other plates and amatory cups in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in Milan, Pesaro, etc.

PSEUDO PELLIPARIO is the conventional name given to an unknown artist of a style very close to that of P. and often confused with him.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: E. Molinier, La céramique italienne, Paris 1888; O. von Falke, Majollshen von N. da Urbino, in Amtliche Berichte der Kgl. Museen, 39 (1917), p. 1; id., s. v. in Thieme-Becker, XXVI, p. 368 (with previous bibl.), B. Rackum, Guide to ital. maiolica, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1933; id., Some majolica paintings by N. P., in Burlington magazine, 52 (1935), p. 104; G. Ballardini, Corpus della maiolica ital., I, Rome 1933; id., La maiolica ital., Florence 1938, p. 42.

Nolfo di Carpegna

@incollection{ec9_pellipario_nicola, author = {Di, Carpegna Nolfo}, title = {Pellipario, nicola}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {1092--1093}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pellipario-nicola} }

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Pellipario, Nicola

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