FOGOLINO, Marcello

(b. ~1485 Vicenza, d. ~1548 )

Italian painter and printmaker. The son of Francisco, a painter from Friuli, he was trained in Vicenza, in the workshop of Bartolomeo Montagna. Although he was in Venice between c. 1508 and 1516, it was Montagna’s retardataire style belonging to the 15th century that proved the decisive influence in Fogolino’s early works, for example the Virgin and Child with Saints (c. 1513-15; The Hague, Mauritshuis). Between 1521 and 1524 he worked in Friuli, where his St Francis with Sts Daniel and John the Baptist (c. 1522; Pordenone Cathedral), with its asymmetrical arrangement and bulky, powerfully modelled figure types, shows him responding quickly to Pordenone’s dynamic style.

He was banished from Venice, for complicity in a murder in 1527, and went to Trento. He worked painting frescoes in the Tridentine region, including Castel Buonconsiglio, Castello Malpaga, Villa Salvotti, and Palazzo Sardagna.

Fresco cycle

The decoration of large halls with the deeds of the nobility and their ancestors was intended to inspire the viewer’s admiration. The depiction of such events from the recent past has a long tradition. Most such cycles in the first half of the sixteenth century, however, are dedicated to a single person or event, as for example, in the Castello Colleoni. By contrast, from the middle of the century onward this genre was increasingly devoted to the representation of dynasties.

The fresco cycle in this large room represents depictions of King Christian I of Denmark’s visit to Bartolommeo Colleoni in 1474.

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Fresco cycle (detail)

This scene depicts a tournament in honour of Christian I of Denmark.

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