POLIDORO DA LANCIANO

Italian painter, also known as Polidoro Lanzani; Polidoro de Renzi di Lanzano; Polidoro Veneziano. Documented in Venice before 1536, he specialized in paintings showing various combinations of the Holy Family and saints in informal, outdoor settings. Although Polidoro was not a pupil of Titian, his works are closely dependent on the older master’s paintings of this type and have often been mistakenly attributed to him. The Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist (c. 1550; Paris, Louvre) is typical of Polidoro’s work. A delicately handled figure group is set in a spacious wooded landscape, where the foliage is treated with literal precision. The Christ Child leans forward to accept a lamb offered by St John. The motif was often used by Polidoro but is found earlier in Titian’s Virgin and Child with St Agnes and the Infant St John the Baptist (c. 1535; Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts).

Despite his continuing allegiance to the lyricism of the early Titian, Polidoro was also receptive to the increasingly ornamental style of Bonifazio de’ Pitati in the 1540s and to Veronese’s decorative classicism in the 1550s. The Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene and a Donor (c. 1560; Dresden, Gemäldegalerie) is characterized by a new stress on elegant costume and richly patterned surfaces. The figure group is placed in a forward plane against prominent Classical architecture to give added monumentality to the composition. Polidoro occasionally executed altarpieces (e.g. the Pentecost, 1546; Venice, Accademia), ceiling paintings (e.g. Venice, S Salvatore, refectory, destroyed) and portraits (e.g. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), but he was less successful in these genres. Nonetheless, Ridolfi’s report that Polidoro was little regarded in his day appears to be contradicted by Dolce’s inclusion of him in a list of the 12 greatest painters in Italy.