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(2) Francesco Morone
(b Verona, 1471; d Verona, 16 May 1529). Son of (1) Domenico Morone. He was taught by his father, with whom he collaborated c. 1500–05. His imposing Crucifixion (1498; Verona, S Bernadino), however, owes more to Bartolommeo Montagna and Giovanni Buonconsiglio from nearby Vicenza in its dark, lofty sky and lyrical expressiveness. Dated altarpieces of 1502 (Milan, Brera) and 1503 (Verona, S Maria in Organo), both depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints, show the geometric rounding off of figures and the symmetry of arrangement characteristic of Francesco’s mature art, as well as a subtle interplay of lights and colours. They reflect a study both of Mantegna’s high altarpiece for S Maria in Organo (1496) and of Venetian models. Mantegnesque too is the illusionistic cupola Francesco painted in fresco for S Maria in Organo’s sacristy (payments 1505–7), lauded by Vasari and still startling in its perspectival virtuosity. Giovanni Bellini’s predawn Resurrection (Berlin, Gemäldegal.) furnished a precedent for the marvellously observed and calibrated sunset skies that transfigure several of Francesco Morone’s panels, for instance the Stigmatization of St Francis (Verona, Castelvecchio) or the Virgin and Child (Verona, Bib. Capitolare). Those skies, overarching dusky crags, fir trees and valleys inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s prints produce effects unique to this artist in his time and curiously prophetic of Caspar David Friedrich. Francesco Morone’s style did not change radically during the three decades of his career. He was impervious to the innovations of Giorgione and Titian in Venice, but his later art does exhibit—in the idealized regularity of figures and faces, the symmetrical harmony of compositions and the usual tenor of dignified calm—a distant approach to some aspects of Raphaelesque classicism. This approach appears especially in his occasional collaborations with his close friend Girolamo dai Libri, notably the organ shutters for S Maria in Organo (1515; Marcellise, parish church). These depict paired Saints, paired Prophets and a Nativity set against deep, sub-alpine landscapes. Some modern scholars have considered Francesco Morone essentially a continuer of his father’s presumed innovations. Vasari was more accurate: ‘He was taught the principles of art by his father, but so exerted himself as shortly to become a much better artist.’ Nothing in Domenico’s surviving work foreshadows the subtle luminism, the understated monumentality or the poetic sensibility that make Francesco’s a decidedly personal statement. Francesco’s art moreover consolidated in the High Renaissance generation certain distinctively Veronese aesthetic preferences, for example for slightly phosphorescent colours in particular combinations and for firm, rounded forms. These determined the style of Francesco’s pupil Paolo Cavazzola and can still be seen two generations later in that of Paolo Veronese.
Part of the Morone family
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