SQUARCIONE, FRANCESCO. - Paduan painter, b. in 1397, d. in 1468.
A tailor and embroiderer, he devoted himself to painting in 1429 and founded a school that gathered young painters, among them A. Mantegna, whom he adopted, M. Zoppo, and G. Schiavone. In contrast to an usurped reputation as leader of the Paduan Renaissance school of painting, the figure of S. was reduced, thanks to the studies of Kristneffer and Fiocco and the documentation of E. Rigoni, to that of an intelligent animator and enthusiastic collector of art objects, but a mediocre painter. Of him as a painter there remain the polyptych with St. Jerome and four saints (1449–52, Museo civico di Padova), still Gothicizing, with weak modelling and flattened chiaroscuro; the signed Madonna and Child in the Berlin Gallery, in which criticism, however, detects the collaboration of Schiavone. The small portrait of Federico II in the Uffizi is attributed to him, so Gothic in character that some consider it to be by Vecchietta.