Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain04cham).pdf/348
are in Venice: In S. Caterina, two scenes from the Legend of St. Catherine and the Triumph of Virginity; in S. Giustina, St. Justina, one of his best works; in S. Maria del Pianto, a Madonna and Saints; in S. Bartolommeo, the Death of the Virgin; in S. Lione, a Crucifixion; in S. Giovanni Evangelista, four pictures; and in the Academy, a Christ and the Money Changers. Portraits by him in Louvre and Dresden Gallery; Young Man and Young Woman, Berlin Museum.—Ch. Blanc, École vénitienne.
VECCHIETTA, IL, born at Castiglione
di Valdorcia in the Sienese territory in
1412 (?), died in Siena, June 6, 1480.
Sienese school. Real name Lorenzo di Pietro
di Giovanni di Lando; called Il Vecchietta
(the little old man), perhaps from the
age of many of his habitual models. Despite
the dryness of his style he was highly
esteemed during his lifetime, and stands
among the best painters of the later Sienese
school. His masterpiece, an altarpiece in
the Cathedral at Pienza, painted about
1447, is a noble work. It represents the
Ascending Virgin, our Lord, Saints Catherine
and Agatha, Popes Calixtus and Pius II.
(who ordered the picture), and in the upper
part, six saints, patriarchs, or prophets.
"In this work," says a late writer, "Vecchietta
joins to the sweetness of the Sienese
school a severity of drawing and a dramatic
force worthy of Florence." Among his
other works are frescos in the Hospital at
Siena (1441) and a relic press (1445), also
the decoration of several ceilings and part
of the tribune of the Sienese Baptistery
(1449-50), as well as an altarpiece, in the
Sienese Academy and a Madonna and
Saints in the Uffizi, dated 1457. Vecchietta
also painted frescos in the Palazzo Pubblico,
Siena, of which a St. Catherine (1460), and
a Virgin of Mercy sheltering the people
under her mantle and attended by saints,
still survive. Much gilding, stamped and
cut out in patterns, according to the fashion
of the time, marks these works, which are
most carefully elaborated in a precise, formal,
and dry manner. This is also noticeable
in Vecchietta's bronze and marble
works, of which he executed many. He was
also an architect and a goldsmith.—C. & C.,
Italy, iii. 59; Vasari, ed. Le Mon., iv. 209;
ed. Mil., iii. 75, 87; Müntz, Tour du Monde
(1882), No. 1117; Müntz, À travers la Toscane,
342; Perkins, Hist. Handbook Italian
Sculpture (London, 1882), 67.
VECELLI (Vecellio), FRANCESCO, born
at Cadore about 1475, died in 1560. Venetian
school. Brother, probably younger, of
Titian; went about 1487 to Venice, where
he studied first under Zuccato, and later
with Giovanni Bellini. Having left the
school of the Bellini to become a soldier,
he returned to Venice after the League
of Cambrai and studied with his brother,
whose jealousy he is questionably said to
have aroused. His earliest picture is a Madonna,
in the Genova Chapel at the Pieve di
Cadore, which shows that he began to paint
with almost as much promise as Titian himself,
but his later efforts proved that he
was not of the stuff of which great painters
are made, and he finally settled down to
commercial pursuits at Cadore. In his Madonna
with Saints, in S. Vito di Cadore, his
style is vastly below that of Titian's. His
frescos in S. Salvatore, Venice, and his pictures
on the shutters of the organ (1530)
show more power, more freedom of handling,
and greater spirit than any other of
his extant works; but they lack distinction,
and the figures are strained in action and
overweighted in muscle. His Nativity, in
Casa Ponte at Fonzaso, near Belluno, has
been assigned to Titian. Other pictures by
him are in the Venice Academy and the
galleries of Modena, Dresden, and Berlin.—C.
& C., Titian, ii. 476; Ch. Blanc, École
vénitienne.
VECELLI, LAVINIA, portrait, Titian,
Berlin Museum; canvas, H. 3 ft. 3-1/2 in. × 2
ft. 7-1/2 in. A robust girl, dressed in a yellowish
flowered silk, raises with both hands,
to the level of her forehead, a silver dish of