Jump to content

Carlo Crivelli

From Catholicism Wiki
Carlo Crivelli
The Annunciation, with St. Emidius, National Gallery, London (1486)
The Annunciation, with St. Emidius, National Gallery, London (1486)
Born Carlo Crivelli
c. 1430
Venice, Republic of Venice
Died c. 1495 (aged 64–65)
Ascoli Piceno, Papal States
Known for Painting, tempera
Movement Late Gothic, Renaissance

Carlo Crivelli (c. 1430 – c. 1495) was an Italian Renaissance painter of conservative Late Gothic decorative sensibility,[1] who spent his early years in the Veneto, where he absorbed influences from the Vivarini, Squarcione, and Mantegna. He left the Veneto by 1458 and spent most of the remainder of his career in the March of Ancona, where he developed a distinctive personal style that contrasts with that of his Venetian contemporary Giovanni Bellini.

Early life

Crivelli was born around 1430–35 in Venice to a family of painters and received his artistic formation there and in Padua. The details of Crivelli's career are still sparse:[2] He is said to have studied under Jacobello del Fiore, who was painting as late as 1436; at that time Crivelli was probably only a boy.[3] He also studied at the school of Vivarini in Venice, then left Venice for Padua, where he is believed to have worked in the workshop of Francesco Squarcione and then, after being sentenced in 1457 to a six-month prison term for an affair with a married woman, left in 1459 for Zadar in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia, but then a Venetian territory).

Career

He was master of his own shop when sent to prison for adultery in 1457. The dates he signed on the pictures that survive extend from 1468 on an altarpiece in the church of San Silvestro at Massa Fermana near Fermo to 1493 on The Dead Christ between St John, the Virgin and Mary Magdalene in Milan's Brera Gallery.[3]

Though the artist advertised his Venetian origins with his signature, often some variation on Carolus Crivellus Venetus ('Carlo Crivelli of Venice'),[4] Crivelli seems to have worked chiefly in the March of Ancona, and especially in and near Ascoli Piceno. Only two pictures can be found today in Venice, both in the church of San Sebastiano.[3]

He painted in tempera only, despite the increasing popularity of oil painting during his lifetime, and on panels, though some of his paintings have been transferred to canvas. His predilection for decoratively punched gilded backgrounds is one of the marks of this conservative taste, in part imposed by his patrons. Of his early polyptychs, only one, the altarpiece from Ascoli Piceno, dated 1473, survives in its entirety in its original frame, and still in its original location (the city's Cathedral). All the others have been disassembled and their panels and predella scenes are divided among several museums.

An amorphous band of contemporaries, imitators and followers, termed Crivelleschi, reflect to varying degrees aspects of his style.

Work

Unlike the naturalistic trends arising in Florence during his lifetime, Crivelli's style continues to represent the courtly International Gothic sensibility. His urban settings are jewel-like and full of elaborate allegorical detail. He favored verdant landscape backgrounds, and his works can be identified by his characteristic use of fruits and flowers as decorative motifs, often depicted in pendant festoons,[3] which are also a hallmark of the Paduan studio of Francesco Squarcione, where Crivelli may have worked.

His paintings have a linear quality identified with his Umbrian contemporaries. Crivelli is a painter of marked individuality. Unlike Giovanni Bellini, his contemporary, his works are not "soft", but clear and definite in contour with marked attention to detail. His use of trompe-l'œil, often compared with that found in the works of Northern Renaissance painters like Rogier van der Weyden, includes raised objects, such as jewels and armor modeled in gesso on the panel.

Commissioned by the Franciscans and Dominicans of Ascoli, Crivelli's work is exclusively religious in nature. His paintings consist largely of Madonna and Child images, Pietà, and the altarpieces known as polyptychs that were increasingly unfashionable. Often filled with images of suffering, such as gaping wounds in Christ's hands and side and the mouths of mourners twisted in agony, Crivelli's work fulfills the spiritual needs of his patrons. These ultra-realistic, sometimes disturbing qualities have often led critics to label Crivelli's paintings "grotesque", much like his fellow Northern Italian painter, Cosimo Tura. His work attracted numerous prestigious commissions and must have appealed to the taste of his patrons.

Carlo Crivelli died in the Marche (probably Ascoli Piceno) around 1495. Vittorio Crivelli, with whom he occasionally collaborated, was his younger brother. Pietro Alemanno, a painter who immigrated to the March of Ancona from Germany/Austria, was his pupil and collaborator. Donato Crivelli, who was also a pupil of Jacobello and was working in 1459, may be of the same family as Carlo.[3]

Reputation

His work fell out of favor following his death, and Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, which is notably Florentine in its outlook, does not mention him. He had something of a revival, especially in the UK, during the time of the pre-Raphaelite painters, several of whom, including Edward Burne-Jones, admired his work. His reputation faded with that movement, but recent writings on his work and a rehanging of his work in the National Gallery, London, have brought him renewed attention.

Susan Sontag in Notes on "Camp" (1992) wrote: "Camp is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l'œil insects and cracks in the masonry."[5]

Works

Another of his principal pictures is in San Francesco di Matelica.

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Carlo Crivelli — Italian painter. Little is known of his life, and his b. and d. are usually reckoned by his earliest and latest signed pictures, 1468-93. He may have been a pupil of Antonio and Bartolommeo Murano. Crivelli worked entirely in tempora, of which he was a master. He early attained a style of his own and his pictures, though sometimes stiff, are decorative and beautiful in colouring. He could not compose, in the modern sense, but was lavish in his treatment of single figures. Architectural features were often introduced by him and life-like fruits and flowers are placed in vivid relief against beautifully finished marbles. Crivelli, it would seem, worked for twenty-two years in cities lying within the Marches of Ancona, especially near Ascoli. He signed himself "Crivellus" and after 1490, when he was knighted by Ferdinand II of Naples, added "miles" to his signature. The cathedral of Ascoli has a "Virgin and Child" dated 1493. Among his earliest work is the altar-piece of San Silvestro, Massa, signed and dated 1468, while the "Coronation of the Virgin" (1493) in the Oggione Collection, Milan, is probably the latest. The National Gallery, London, has a number of Crivelli's paintings and the galleries of the Continent are also well supplied. His work is best seen in a half light and at a little distance. His more elaborated pictures are: "Madonna and Child", 1476, altar-piece for San Domenico, Ascoli (National Gallery, London); "The Dead Christ" (National Gallery); "Pietà" (Cathedral, Ascoli); "Madonna and Saints", 1491 (Berlin); "St. Francis of Assisi" (Brussels); "Pietà" (Vatican); "Virgin and Saints" (Lateran).

RUSHFORTH, Carlo Crivelli (London, 1900); BLANC, Histoire des peintres de tous les écoles (Paris, 1877).

References

  1. Back to citation "...a great fifteenth century artist, but one in whose paintings stylistic evolution is not the predominant interest", Ronald Lightbown began his monograph.
  2. Back to citation Frey's monograph of 1927 is superseded by R. W. Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli (Yale University Press) 2004, which sums up the scholarship, much of it provided over several decades by the late Federico Zeri and sets Crivelli in the cultural context of the Marche in the fifteenth century.
  3. Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 Back to citation occurrence 3.2 Back to citation occurrence 3.3 Back to citation occurrence 3.4 Rossetti 1911.
  4. Back to citation From 1490 he added the title Miles, by then having been knighted (Cavaliere) by Ferdinand II of Naples.
  5. Back to citation "Martin Irvine, Georgetown University".
  6. Back to citation (in Italian) Pietro Zampetti, Carlo Crivelli, Nardini Editore, Firenze 1986.
  7. Back to citation "An Apostle". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  8. Back to citation "IDLE SPECULATIONS: Carlo Crivelli: The Immaculate Conception (1492)". 23 April 2007.
  9. Back to citation "Lamentation over the Dead Christ". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  10. Back to citation "Madonna and Child". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  11. Back to citation "Chiesa di San Giacomo Maggiore".
  12. Back to citation "Madonna and Child Enthroned". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  13. Back to citation "A Medievalist at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum". 6 July 2015.
  14. Back to citation "Pietà". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  15. Back to citation "Saint Dominic". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 January 2016.

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Lightbown, Ronald. Carlo Crivelli. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004.

Media related to Paintings by Carlo Crivelli at Wikimedia Commons

Retrieved from "https://catholicism.wiki/index.php?title=Carlo_Crivelli&oldid=56249"