Pordenone, Giovanni Antonio Sacchi, called Il

PORDENONE, Giovanni Antonio Sacchi (de Lodesanis, de Sacchis), Called Il. - Painter, b. at Pordenone in 1483-1484, d. at Ferrara on 12 Jan. 1539. A complex artistic figure, yet easily identifiable in the various phases of his activity, beginning with his training in the mainland Venetian milieu connected with Montagna and dominated by Giovanni Francesco di Tolmezzo, which would always remain at the basis of his various experiences.

Indeed, the works preceding his journey, made with Pellegrino da S. Daniele to Ferrara (1508), are linked to that milieu, among them the frescoed triptych in the parish church of Valeriano of 1506, while the first Giorgionesque influences appear only around 1511 in the Madonna and Saints from Collatto, now in the Galleries of Venice, to become more pronounced in the subsequent works, such as the altarpieces of Susegana, Vallenoncello and the cathedral of Pordenone (1515).

A journey to Rome, made by P. around 1516, marks a new phase in his painting in which the vigorous plasticism of Tolmezzo origin, which alongside the Venetians had taken on a chromatic guise, is strengthened through contact with the works of Raphael and Michelangelo, with in addition a new sense of space. P. would then express himself in an almost violent manner, clothing the figures in a color dominated by chiaroscuro, impressing upon the images a motion that preludes Baroque visions. From this period are the frescoes of the parish church of Rorai, of the cathedral of Treviso (1520), of that of Cremona (scenes of the Passion, 1521-22), the altarpiece of Torre (1520-21), the Schizzi altarpiece (1522). The perhaps most significant work of this moment, together 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 with a more sober language in the frescoes of S. Maria di Campagna in Piacenza (1529-31), in the Giustiniani altarpiece in S. Lorenzo in Venice executed in the same years, arriving at his final experience thanks to his contacts with Parmigianino (v.). It will be useful at this point to recall the importance that P. had in spreading in Venetian territory the Emilian mannerist language, so rich in consequences in the further developments of art in Venice (v. TINTORETTO). All the influences undergone remain always clearly legible in the vast and qualitatively discordant production of this master, who nevertheless through his own eclecticism knew how to arrive at a personal language made of colors and compositional rhythms of great effect, sustained by a fervid imagination that, although weakened in his last years, allowed him to create yet another masterpiece in his last work, the Noli me tangere in the cathedral of Cividale.

Maria Donati