Predlošci Perina del Vage za Palu sv. Mateja evanđelista Pellegrina Brocarda - Trška, Tanja (Array, 2007)
The altarpiece of St Matthew the Evangelist by the Italian painter Pellegrino Brocardo (Pigna, Liguria, ? - Genoa or Ventimiglia?, 1590) was commissioned in 1558 by Stjepan Sorkočević to fulfill a vow of his brother Pavle. According to the tradition, the painting was once situated in the private chapel of Miho Pracat on the island of Lopud, and then transferred to the newly built cathedral at an unknown date. Pellegrino Brocardo came to Dubrovnik in the entourage of the Archbishop Lodovico Beccadelli, who stayed in the city from 1555 to 1560, where he painted his only two known works: the fresco decoration of the Archbishop’ s villa on the island of Šipan, and the altarpiece of St Matthew the Evangelist, now in the Dubrovnik cathedral. The St Matthew altarpiece can be considered a 16-century collage for combining literal citations from the works of the Italian painter Perino del Vaga (Florence, 1501 - Rome, 1547). The Virgin with the Child, appearing as a vision in the upper part of the painting, repeats the same figure in Perino del Vaga’ s tondo representing the Holy Family (ca. 1540) now in the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna, while the figure of the Evangelist is modelled on the figure of St Mark from a lost drawing by Perino, known from the 1540s etching by Giulio Bonasone (Bologna, 1488? - after 1547). The choice of these very models is probably related to Brocardo’ s patron Lodovico Beccadelli, whose Bolognese origins allow the possibility of the painter’ s first-hand knowledge of the original models. The Holy Family tondo was once part of the Bolognese collection of the Bovio family, with whom Beccadelli had close contacts, while the works of the Bolognese artist Giulio Bonasone were linked to the Archbishop on several occasions. The Bolognese origins of the direct models for the St Matthew altarpiece in Dubrovnik cathedral constitute new data for the reconstruction of Pellegrino Brocardo’ s biography, whose painting has remained rather marginal to Italian art history. These models indicate that the painter may have spent some time in Bologna, while certain mannerist features of the altarpiece in question confirm his stay in Rome. The painting reveals elements of the new visual expression of 16th century Italian art, above all the inevitable influence of Michelangelo, but also the direct knowledge of the later phase of Perino del Vaga’ s fresco painting, evident in the rendering of the background. The St Matthew altarpiece, defined as “ the most important mannerist work painted in the Dubrovnik area” (Kruno Prijatelj), also marks a change in taste of artwork commissions in mid-century Dubrovnik, which evidently became more open to the new stylistic currents in Italian painting.