PORDENONE, GIOVANNI ANTONIO

A journey to Rome undertaken by Pordenone around 1516 marks a new phase in his painting, in which the vigorous plasticism of Tolmezzo origin, which alongside the Venetians had assumed a chromatic guise, is strengthened by contact with the works of Raphael and Michelangelo, adding a new sense of space. Pordenone then expresses himself in an almost violent manner, clothing his figures in a colour dominated by chiaroscuro, imparting to his images a movement that foreshadows Baroque visions. Works from this period include the frescoes in the parish church of Rorai, in the cathedral of Treviso (1520), and in that of Cremona (scenes of the Passion, 1521–22), the altarpiece of Torre (1520–21), the Schizzi altarpiece (1522)—perhaps the most significant work of this moment—along with the organ shutters of the cathedral of Spilimbergo and the two Saints in the church of S. Rocco in Venice (1528); while he expresses himself in a more restrained language in the frescoes of S. Maria di Campagna in Piacenza (1529–31) and in the Giustiniani altarpiece in S. Lorenzo in Venice, executed in the same years. He reaches his final Parmigianino (v.). At this point one must recall the importance Pordenone had in spreading the Emilian Mannerist idiom in Venetian territory, an idiom so rich in consequences for the further developments of art in Venice (v. TINTORETTO). All the influences he absorbed remain clearly legible in the vast and qualitatively uneven production of this master, who, however, through his own eclecticism, succeeded in arriving at a personal language made of colours and compositional rhythms of great effect, sustained by a fervid imagination that, though weakened in his later years, still allowed him to create a masterpiece in his final work, the *Noli me tangere* in the cathedral of Cividale.

Mario Donati