Artist of the Day, November 8, 2021:Carlo Crivelli, an Italian Renaissance painter (#1412)

 Carlo Crivelli (1430 – 1495) was an Italian Renaissance painter of conservative Late Gothic decorative sensibility, who spent his early years in the Veneto, where he absorbed influences from the Vivarini, Squarcione, and Mantegna. He left the Veneto by 1458 and spent most of the remainder of his career in the March of Ancona, where he developed a distinctive personal style that contrasts with that of his Venetian contemporary Giovanni Bellini.

Early life
Crivelli was born in Venice to a family of painters and received his artistic formation there and in Padua. The details of Crivelli's career are still sparse: He is said to have studied under Jacobello del Fiore, who was painting as late as 1436; at that time Crivelli was probably only a boy. He also studied at the school of Vivarini in Venice, then left Venice for Padua, where he is believed to have worked in the workshop of Francesco Squarcione and then, after being sentenced in 1457 to a six-month prison term for an affair with a married woman, left in 1459 for Zadar in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia, but then a Venetian territory).

Career
He was master of his own shop when sent to prison for adultery in 1457. The dates he signed on the pictures that survive extend from 1468 on an altarpiece in the church of San Silvestro at Massa Fermana near Fermo to 1493 on The Dead Christ between St John, the Virgin and Mary Magdalene in Milan's Brera Gallery.

Though the artist advertised his Venetian origins with his signature, often some variation on Carolus Crivellus Venetos ("Carlo Crivelli of Venice"), Crivelli seems to have worked chiefly in the March of Ancona, and especially in and near Ascoli Piceno. Only two pictures can be found today in Venice, both in the church of San Sebastiano.

He painted in tempera only, despite the increasing popularity of oil painting during his lifetime, and on panels, though some of his paintings have been transferred to canvas. His predilection for decoratively punched gilded backgrounds is one of the marks of this conservative taste, in part imposed by his patrons. Of his early polyptychs, only one, the altarpiece from Ascoli Piceno, dated 1473, survives in its entirety in its original frame, and still in its original location (the city's Cathedral). All the others have been disassembled and their panels and predella scenes are divided among several museums.

Work
Unlike the naturalistic trends arising in Florence during his lifetime, Crivelli's style continues to represent the courtly International Gothic sensibility. His urban settings are jewel-like and full of elaborate allegorical detail. He favored verdant landscape backgrounds, and his works can be identified by his characteristic use of fruits and flowers as decorative motifs, often depicted in pendant festoons,[3] which are also a hallmark of the Paduan studio of Francesco Squarcione, where Crivelli may have worked.

His paintings have a linear quality identified with his Umbrian contemporaries. Crivelli is a painter of marked individuality. Unlike Giovanni Bellini, his contemporary, his works are not "soft", but clear and definite in contour with marked attention to detail. His use of trompe-l'œil, often compared with that found in the works of Northern Renaissance painters like Rogier van der Weyden, includes raised objects, such as jewels and armor modeled in gesso on the panel.

Commissioned by the Franciscans and Dominicans of Ascoli, Crivelli's work is exclusively religious in nature. His paintings consist largely of Madonna and Child images, Pietà, and the altarpieces known as polyptychs that were increasingly unfashionable. Often filled with images of suffering, such as gaping wounds in Christ's hands and side and the mouths of mourners twisted in agony, Crivelli's work fulfills the spiritual needs of his patrons. These ultra-realistic, sometimes disturbing qualities have often led critics to label Crivelli's paintings "grotesque",[citation needed] much like his fellow Northern Italian painter, Cosimo Tura. His work attracted numerous prestigious commissions and must have appealed to the taste of his patrons.

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 Madonna and Child, 1460

 Saint George Slaying the Dragon, part of the Porto San Giorgio Altarpiece, 1470

 An Apostle, 1471-73

 Saint George, 1472

 Madonna Enthroned, 1475

 St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Peter and Mary Magdalene, 1475

  Pietà, 1476

 Saint Stephen, 1476

 St Thomas Aquinas, 1476

St. Francis, 1476

St. Francis,  detail, 1476

  Madonna and Child, 1480

 Maria Magdalena, 1480

 Maria Magdalena, detail, 1480

 The Madonna and Child, 1480

Madonna and Child, 1480–86

Saint Francis with the Blood of Christ, 1480–86

Madonna and Child with Two Angels, 1481-82

Madonna and Child, 1482

The Virgin Annunciate, (detail) 1482

 Triptych of Saint Domenico, 1482

Madonna and Child, 1482-83

The Annunciation with Saint Emidius, (Detail) 1486

The Annunciation with Saint Emidius, 1486

The Annunciation with Saint Emidius, (Detail) 1486

Beato Ferretti (The Vision of the Blessed Gabriele), 1489

 La Madonna della Rondine, 1490

 Madonna and Child with Saints and Donor, 1490

 Saint George and the dragon, 1490

The Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Sebastian, 1491

 Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (detail), 1492

 Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, 1492

 Pietà, 1493

Saint Peter Martyr (detail)