ROMANINO, Girolamo

In this devotional image, painted with brilliant palette, Romanino seems to have been interested in German art, especially in its expressivity.

The early decades of the sixteenth century in Cremona were some of the most turbulent in its political history. In these years of constantly changing foreign rulers, the local leaders of Cremona pursued an elaborate project of decoration with remarkable consistency. From 1506 to 1522 the community had the chancel and nave of the twelve-century cathedral frescoed. By continuing the decoration through all the changes in government, the community represented its own identity; it was an act of local self-assertion.

The decoration was begun in the semi-dome vault of the apse in 1506. Boccaccio Boccaccino depicted, following a time-honoured scheme, the Epiphany of God in the Last Days (Christ in Majesty) as the principal and culminating image within the church space. Later, in 1514 Boccaccino received the commission to begin a fresco cycle of the life of Mary and Christ on the walls of the nave. They begin on the left wall, running from the fa�ade to the apse and then on the right wall from the apse back to the fa�ade. The left wall is dedicated to Mary and Christ’s childhood; the right to the Passion.

Boccaccino painted the scenes above the first four arches of the nave, and Giovan Francesco Bembo had been active above the fifth arch. He was not awarded another commission, the fresco cycle was continued by the Cremonese artist Altobello Melone. He painted the scenes above the next arch, and continued the cycle on the right wall, where he painted five scenes of the Passion above the three arches next to the apse.

Romanino was commissioned for the next four scenes of the Passion on the right wall; he painted in 1519 the scenes Christ before Pilate, Flagellation of Christ, Christ Crowned with Thorns, and Ecce Homo. For these scenes Romanino borrowed motifs from D�rer’ engravings. The open brushwork, the atmospheric space, the architecture lined with sculpture, and the profound psychological characterization of the faces are owed to Romanino’s study of Titian’s frescoes in Padua.

View all images of the fresco decoration in Cremona Cathedral by various artists.

To the left of the paintings is a series of portraits of local dignitaries from Cremona.

The early decades of the sixteenth century in Cremona were some of the most turbulent in its political history. In these years of constantly changing foreign rulers, the local leaders of Cremona pursued an elaborate project of decoration with remarkable consistency. From 1506 to 1522 the community had the chancel and nave of the twelve-century cathedral frescoed. By continuing the decoration through all the changes in government, the community represented its own identity; it was an act of local self-assertion.

The decoration was begun in the semi-dome vault of the apse in 1506. Boccaccio Boccaccino depicted, following a time-honoured scheme, the Epiphany of God in the Last Days (Christ in Majesty) as the principal and culminating image within the church space. Later, in 1514 Boccaccino received the commission to begin a fresco cycle of the life of Mary and Christ on the walls of the nave. They begin on the left wall, running from the fa�ade to the apse and then on the right wall from the apse back to the fa�ade. The left wall is dedicated to Mary and Christ’s childhood; the right to the Passion.

Boccaccino painted the scenes above the first four arches of the nave, and Giovan Francesco Bembo had been active above the fifth arch. He was not awarded another commission, the fresco cycle was continued by the Cremonese artist Altobello Melone. He painted the scenes above the next arch, and continued the cycle on the right wall, where he painted five scenes of the Passion above the three arches next to the apse.

Romanino was commissioned for the next four scenes of the Passion on the right wall; he painted in 1519 the scenes Christ before Pilate, Flagellation of Christ, Christ Crowned with Thorns, and Ecce Homo. For these scenes Romanino borrowed motifs from D�rer’ engravings. The open brushwork, the atmospheric space, the architecture lined with sculpture, and the profound psychological characterization of the faces are owed to Romanino’s study of Titian’s frescoes in Padua.

View all images of the fresco decoration in Cremona Cathedral by various artists.

From Giorgione onwards, the subject of pastoral concert had a rich history in sixteenth-century Venetian art. This example is the most complex and ambitious of Romanino’s drawings exploring the subject. It shows a group of three elegantly attired women and a satyr deployed in a circle in an expansive landscape that recedes to a distant background dotted with tiny rustic buildings. Each figure plays a viola da gamba.

In the last decade and a half of his life, Romanino painted a handful of modestly scaled but intensely felt devotional works. These include several Crucifixions and, most notably, this Ecce Homo. The expressionism that had been so pronounced in the 1530s and early 1540s is lessened in this grave scene and replaced by a subtler emotion.

The picture shows the loggia before the recent restoration, during which the overpainting of the Ignudi was removed.

Painters, for the most part, were only interested in themes to the extent that they enabled them to demonstrate their abilities. They sometimes introduced things into their decorations that were not called for by the theme, but merely served to demonstrate their art. Girolamo Romanino’s Ignudi in the loggia of the Palazzo del Buonconsiglio in Trent were perceived by some viewers as a violation of the decorum.

It is already clear in this, his first definitely dated work, that Girolamo Romanino, like Lotto and Savoldo, was reluctant to enter fully into the tradition of Venetian figurative art. The panel was painted for the Chapel of the Holy Passion in the old church of San Lorenzo in Brescia and in it we can see Romanino’s predilection for Titian’s sonorously rich colour transposed onto a plane of popular narrative strengthened by a romantic, imaginative pathos. Against the background of a landscape which itself seems constricted in its atmosphere of profound anguish, the figures of the foreground seem to float to the surface in sharply cadenced groupings painted in timbres of a blazing quality. The influence of Lombard style which can be noted in the roundish faces painted after the fashion of Bramante, are accompanied by the influence of Northern European painting which can be seen in the view of the town glimpsed through the steamy, stormy atmosphere, in the objective quality of the portrait of the man, in the expressionistic deformation of the little human figures moving around the crosses at Golgotha.

In this earliest attributable work by Romanino, the characteristic quality of the artist’s style is already evident: an expressionistic realism which seems to offer an extremely personalized reflection of the political, social and religious crises that shook the Western world in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Romanino (Girolamo di Romano) studied under the local masters of Brescia but his art was decisively influenced by his famous contemporaries in Venice: Giorgione, Titian and Palma Vecchio. His compositions are large, the structure firm and harmonious, the colours warm and varied. He was greatly concerned with expressing emotion and mood, and his work contains a certain romantic and poetic element.

His Portrait of a Man depicts a young man, wearing a gold brocade coat and a gold-coloured hat and posed against a dark green curtain, who looks rather wistfully into the distance, lost in thought; though his right hand rest on the hilt of his sword, the pose is that of someone both relaxed and meditative. The identity of the sitter is not known (he may have been a member of one of the ruling families of Brescia); the same sitter appears in a smaller fragmentary version now in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.

This altarpiece, executed for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Brescia, was influenced by the young Moretto.

The inscription on the letter held in the hand of the artist is: “Al mio… mo Geronimo Romani pictore bresciano”.

The subject of this enigmatic drawing is not known. Proposals to identify the subject as an allegory or a mythological scene are speculative. It is possible that Romanino simply have undertaken to produce an amusing drawing of two unabashedly immodest beings engaged in primal, animalistic behaviour. The verso of the sheet contains a caricatural profile, it seems also to point to the artist’s humorous intentions.