HAVING IT BOTH WAYS: CARLO CRIVELLI

An adultery conviction resulted in painter Carlo Crivelli’s expulsion from Venice in 1457. Prior to that mishap, he had trained in the workshop of Antonio Vivarini, learning the decorative techniques of gold ground making, punchmarks and tooling, pastiglia (all of which are visible on the image of Saint Peter below) and the other hallmarks of the late Gothic style still current in the Veneto.

above: Carlo Crivelli, Saint Peter (Demidoff Altarpiece), c. 1476, London, National Galley of Art.

Prior to his exile, Crivelli had also worked as an assistant in the Paduan workshop of Francesco Squarcione. There, he would have been exposed to the early work of Squarcione’s student, Andrea Mantegna. Mantegna's severe figure style, learned antiquarianism, heavy emotionality and expertises in one-point perspective and foreshortening deeply influenced Crivelli.

above: Andrea Mantegna, Transport of the Decapitated Body of Saint Christopher, c. 1448/57, Padua, Chiesa degli Eremetani, Ovetari Chapel.

In the dominant, Florentine paradigm of the quattrocento, the late Gothic style and the new humanistic modes of painting were seen as antithetical. In this historiographical model (codified by Vasari in the next century, but present in 15th-century art theory), the former was a necessary precedent for the latter, but it had been superceded and rendered obsolete by it.

Crivelli was either unaware of this paradigm or he simply ignored it. His adoption of the new pictorial vocabulary did not displace his obvious admiration for the Gothic splendor and elegance of his native style. Rather than relinquishing one in favor of the other, he combined the two modes into a highly original hybrid. Aloof Virgins with arched eyebrows and attenuated fingers decked out in gilded finery sit on fictive marble thrones in classicizing architectural settings, framed by fictive marble and rendered in good perspective. 

Although Crivelli’s polemical hybrid stands apart from the other currents in later quattrocento painting, it was a great success with ecclesiastical patrons in the Marche, earning him numerous commissions for altarpieces and devotional panels. 

Due to its unusual character, however, Crivelli’s work spawned no imitators and the hybrid styled died with him in 1490. He falls out of the Italian Renaissance canon immediately thereafter. Vasari does not seem to know of his existence. The paintings benefitted from their maker’s relative obscurity--ignored for centuries, many remained in their original settings and were spared primitive “restorations” and updating. in general, his pictures today are in extremely good states of preservation.

above: Andrea Mantegna, San Zeno Altarpiece, 1457/60, Verona, Basiiica di San Zeno.

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