Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/162

POLLAJUOLO— PONTE. 131 POLLAJUOLO, Antohio, h, at ilo- renoe, 1432 ? ; <2. at Borne, 1498. Tuscan SchooL The son of Jacopo del PoUa- jnolo, and the scholar of Lorenzo GhibertL He was sculptor as well as painter, and a distinguished goldsmith. He assisted Ghiberti in completing the architrave of the second set of gates of the baptistery of San Giovanni at Florence, those with the illustrations from the Old Testament Antonio possessed considerable knowledge of anatomy, and was the first artist who dissected in order to learn the struc- ture and action of the muscles for the purpose of art He devoted himself only latterly to painting, in which art he worked conjointly with his brother Piero, ten years his junior, who had studied under Andrea del Castagno. The best of their works, says Yasari, is the Martyrdom of St Sebastian, in the church of the Servi at Florence, painted in 1475. His composition is simple, and the colouring good, but Bumohr remarks that he never went beyond mediocrity: Yasari notices the anato- mical display of some of his figures, a result of his earlier studies, and his ori- ginal occupation as a modeller. Antonio went to Bome in 1484, by the invitation of Innocent YIU : he made, in 1493, the monument of Siztus lY. in St Peter's, and executed afterwards a monument to Innocent YIII. Accord- ing to the inscription on Antonio's tomb, in San Pietro in Yinculis, he died in his 73rd year, which indicates 1426 as the year of his birth, a date more in accordance also with his assistance of GhibertL He engraved a few plates. Works, Florence, Academy, the three Archangels Michael, Baphael, and GabrieL Uffizj, two pictures of the Labours of Hercules ; another of three Saints, formerly in San Miniato al Monte. In San Miniato, an Annun- ciation. In the church of San Gimig- nano, a Coronation of the Yirgin (by Piero, 1483). Berlin Gallery, an An- nunciation ; and the Martyrdom of St Sebastian. (Vaaari, Bumokr^ Oaye,) PONTE, Jacopo da, called II Bas- SANO from his birthplace, 6. 1510, d. Feb. 13, 1592. Yenetian SchooL The son of Fiancesco da Ponte, a scholar of Giovanni Bellini. He was chiefly instructed by Bonifazio at Yenice, and having studied the works of Titian, of Bonifazio and Parmegiano, for a short time, he returned to Bassano. In his early pictures he adhered to the great historic style of his models, and excelled both in colour and in chiar- oscuro ; but this style he eventually for- sook for one more genial to his tastes. Jacopo Bassano is considered the earliest genre punter in Italy; the great feature of his characteristic works being the intimate blending of sacred and mythological subjects with inci- dents of ordinary life : he introduced every kind of familiar object, whatever might be the subject of the picture ; and he was particularly fond of painting animals, which he constantiy inserted, with or without propriety. He also ex- celled in landscape - painting. The Mourning Marys at Chiswiek; Christ bearing the Cross at Holkam ; a Cruci- fixion in fche Berlin Gallery ; the Nati- vity, at San Giuseppe, the Baptism of Santa Lucilla in the Mumdpalita, and St Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar in the church of San Yalentino, at Bassano, — are among the best spe- cimens of his earlier style. His later -works, though often as sacred and as dignified in their subjects, are purely genre pictures, executed often with a slightness and indifibrence that con- trast strangely with the ordinary re- serve and respect with which the pres- tige of custom usually hallows such subjects imder the treatment of the painter: as Christ driving the Money- changers from the Temple, in the K 2