- Also known as
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Polidoro da Caravaggio
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primary name: Polidoro da Caravaggio
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other name: Caldara, Polidoro
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other name: Caravaggio, Polidoro da
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other name: Caravagio, Polidoro da
- Details
- individual; painter/draughtsman; Lombard; Roman; Italian; Male
- Life dates
- c.1499-1543
- Biography
- Painter. Polidoro Caldara, b. Caravaggio (Lombardy) 1490/1500, d. Messina probably 1536/7 or as Vasari states in 1543 murdered by one of his workshop assistants. According to Vasari, discovered at the age of eighteen working as a labourer in the 'Logge' (decorated c. 1517-19), which he then helped to paint; subsequently, in collaboration with the Florentine, Maturino (d. 1528) and inspired by the example of Peruzzi, decorated innumerable façades with grisaille friezes. Surviving Roman works include: façades of the Palazzo Ricci, Palazzo Milesi (via della Maschera d'Oro), and the Casino del Bufalo (these last detached and now in the Museo di Roma), frescoes in S. Silvestro al Quirinale and four oblong scenes from Roman history in the Villa Lante (these last removed to the Hertziana). After the Sack of Rome he fled to Naples and thence to Messina where 'inter alia' he designed decorations for the entry of Charles V (1535). Surviving pictures include: 'Incredulity of S. Thomas' (London, F.Matthiesen Coll.); 'S. Albert the Carmelite' (Turin, Galleria Sabauda, as Tanzio da Varallo); panels with putti, etc. (Hampton Court); 'Christ carrying the Cross' (from SS. Annunziata, Messina, now Capodimonte, Naples: modelli at Capodimonte and London, Pouncey Coll.); 'Nativity and Pentecost' (modelli, Capodimonte); 'The Crossing of the Red Sea' (Earl of Ellesmere Coll., repr. 'Burlington', lxxiv (193c), p. 32, as El Greco).
- Bibliography
- L.Ravelli, 'PdC', 1978
Pouncey & Gere 1962 (whence following biography)
G. S. in Thieme-Becker (1911) s.v. Caldara, with previous bibliography; K. Cassirer, 'Zeichnungen P. da C. in den Berliner Museen', in Prussian Jahrbuch, xli (1920), pp. 344ff.; C. Pacchiotti, 'Nuove attribuzioni a P. da C. in Roma' in L'Arte, xxx (1927), pp. 189 ff.; A. Châtelet, 'Two Landscape Drawings by P. da C.', in Burlington, xcvi (1954), pp. 181 f.; R. Kultzen, 'Die Malereien P. da C. im Giardino del Bufalo in Rom', in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, ix (1960), pp. 99 ff.; C. Pericoli Ridolfini, Le case romane con facciate graffite e dipinte, catalogue of exhibition held at Palazzo Braschi, Rome, 1960; R. Kultzen, 'Der Freskenzyklus in der ehemaligen Kapelle der Schweizergarde in Rom', in Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte, xxi (1961), pp. 19 ff.
Gere & Pouncey 1983
BM Raphael, pp. 116f., Marabottini. and L. Ravelli, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Bergamo, 1978.
Timothy Clifford, 'Polidoro and English Design', Connoisseur, August 1976, vol. 192, no. 774, pp. 282-291
P. Leone de Castris, 'Polidoro da Caravaggio, l'opera completa', Naples, 2001
David Franklin, 'Polidoro da Caravaggio', New Haven and London, 2018
