PREVITALI, Andrea
Italian painter (original name Andrea Cordegliaghi). He went to Venice as a young man and there became a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, working in his shop copying Madonnas and altarpieces. He is first recorded in 1502, when he signed and dated a Virgin and Child with Donor (Museo Civico, Padua), stating in the inscription that he was a ‘disciple’ of Giovanni Bellini. The painting confirms this description but is exceptionally forward-looking for its date, foreshadowing Palma Vecchio and Titian in the amplitude of the forms, and perhaps reflecting Giorgione’s influence in the free and painterly rendering of the landscape. In other approximately contemporary signed paintings of the Virgin and Child (such as that in the Institute of Art, Detroit), figures deriving in pose and type from Bellini are similarly set against landscapes whose darker and more sylvan character recalls Giorgione.
Previtali’s meeting with Lorenzo Lotto in Bergamo in 1511 was a decisive moment in his career. Although he never abandoned Bellini’s influence, he developed his own personal and expressionistic style, as is evident in his Deposition (Sant’Andrea, Bergamo) and in the Mystical Marriage of St Catherine (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo). These works also reveal the influence of a strong artistic personality like that of Cariani.
