778. MADONNA AND CHILD.
Martino da Udine (Venetian: 1470-1547).
Martino of Udine was called also Pellegrino of San Daniele (a village near the former place). According to Vasari, he was a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, who, astonished at the marvellous progress of his pupil, gave him the name of Pellegrino—that is, rare, extraordinary. More probably, however, it should be interpreted merely as a stranger or foreigner at Udine, Martino being of Dalmatian origin (see for a full account and discussion of this painter Morelli's German Galleries, pp. 18-23). He was, says Sir F. Burton, "one of those men who, with little native genius, have yet the capacity of absorbing material from others, and of working it into new forms with success. Thus Pellegrino turned out some works which, while they carry the foreign stamp of Giorgione, Titian, Pordenone, or other great contemporaries, nevertheless show considerable freshness of conception and treatment." His altar-piece, of 1494, in the church of Osopo, shows the influence of Cima da Conegliano. From 1504 to 1512 he was frequently at Ferrara working for the Duke Alfonso. In 1519-1521 he painted a part of the choir of S. Antonio at S. Daniele (the earlier part was painted in 1497); in this, his best work, he appears as an imitator not only of Pordenone but of Romanino. In 1526 he went, apparently for the first time, to Venice, there to buy colours for a large picture which he had engaged to paint for the church of Cividale: that picture shows his study of Palma. Pellegrino combined with painting the business of a timber merchant. "That so mediocre a painter as Pellegrino should have attained high honour in Friuli need," says Morelli, "surprise no one who knows the other painters of that little country. The value of anything in the world is comparative. The Friulan race never manifested the same talent for art as, for instance, their neighbours of Treviso."
On the right of the throne is St. James, with his hand on the shoulder of the donor of the picture; on the left St. George, with the dead dragon at his horse's feet.
779, 780. FAMILY PORTRAITS.[182]
Borgognone (Lombard: about 1455-1523). See 298.
See also (p. xx)
On the left (779) a group of nine men, above them a hand, probably of some patron saint; on the right (780) a group of thirteen women, kneeling (apparently) by the side of a tomb—studies of character drawing. These pictures are painted on silk (now attached to wood), and were originally part of a standard. Mr. Pater says of Borgognone that "a northern temper is a marked element of his genius—something of the patience, especially, of the masters of Dijon or Bruges, nowhere more clearly [seen] than in the two groups of male and female heads in the National Gallery, family groups, painted in the attitude of worship, with a lowly religious sincerity which may remind us of the contemporary work of M. Legros. Like those northern masters, he accepts piously, but can refine, what 'has no comeliness'" ("Art Notes in North Italy," in the New Review, November 1890).