Palma il Giovane

Iacopo Negretti (1548/50 – 14 October 1628), best known as Jacopo or Giacomo Palma il Giovane or simply Palma Giovane ("Young Palma"), was an Italian painter from Venice and a notable exponent of the Venetian school.

After Tintoretto's death (1594), Palma became Venice's dominant artist perpetuating his style. Outside Venice, he received numerous commissions in the area of Bergamo, then part of the Venetian Domini di Terraferma, and in Central Europe, most prominently from the connoisseur emperor Rudolph II in Prague.

Palma was born in Venice. Born into a family of painters, he was the great-nephew of the painterPalma Vecchio("Old Palma") and the son of Antonio Nigreti (1510/15–1575/85), a minor painter who was himself the pupil of the elder Palma's workshop foremanBonifacio de' Pitatiand who after Bonifazio's death (1553) inherited Bonifacio's shop and clientele; the younger Palma seems to have polished his style making copies afterTitian.

In 1567Guidobaldo II della Rovere,duke of Urbino, recognized Palma's talents, supporting him for four years and sending him to Rome, where he remained until about 1572. Shedding most remnants of Roman manner after his return to Venice, Palma adopted the inescapable models and mannerisms ofTintoretto. His early biographers assert that he found a place in the ageingTitian's workshop; when the master died, Palma stepped in to finish his last work, thePietàin the Accademia, Venice. Palma's first major public commission arrived after a 1577 fire in theDoge's Palace: three scenes in its grand council hall. By the mid-1580s he had digested Tintoretto's versatile figure postures and Titian's thick surfaces, emphasis on light, and loose brushstroke. In Palma Giovane's output, Freedberg detects also "an occasional discursive opulence à laVeronese; and inclinations towards descriptive naturalism à laBassano."

Rejecting Mannerism in the 1580s, he embraced a reformist naturalism.He varied the ingeniously synthesised amalgam according to subject matter and patrons' own eclectic and conservative tastes, with "virtuoso skill and a facile intelligence".

He worked alongside Veronese and Tintoretto on the decorations in the Doge's Palace where he came to know fully the Venetian tradition. From 1580-90 he painted cycles of large canvases either for Venetian Schools or sacred buildings (the sacristies ofSan Giacomo dall'Orioand of the Jesuit church (Gesuiti, theScuola di San Giovanni Evangelista, and theOratorio dei Crociferi). Thanks to the intelligent way they quoted from Tintoretto and their own narrative drive, these are Palma the Younger's best works. After this he went back to official commissions at the Doge's Palace. Among these there is the portrait ofPope Pius V, commissioned by the Bellanti Counts, an influential family who gave four "Capitani del Popolo" to the city of Siena in the Middle Ages. After three centuries in Tuscany, it was bought by Sir Robert Dick in 1842. After almost two hundred years, the portrait was bought fromBonham'sin London byRoberto Gagliardi, and returned to Tuscany where it is now held at theChianciano Museum of Art, a few kilometres from Siena.

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palma_il_Giovane