Marco Pino

Apollo, Nov, 2003 by Daniel Godfrey

After an apprenticeship in Beccafumi's Sienese studio, from 1551 onwards, Marco Pino spent three decades as one of the leading exponents of the 'maniera moderna' in painting in Naples. This exhibition, largely curated by Andrea Zezza and coinciding with the publication of his authoritative monograph on the artist, redressed the traditional neglect of Pino in particular and the pictorial production in Naples during the sixteenth century more generally.

If Papal Rome in the 1540s had given Pino experience in prodigious schemes of fresco decoration, then Spanish Naples allowed him to work independently. From his studio there issued forth numerous large-scale altarpieces in response to a demand stimulated by Tridentine religious reform. Many remain in situ. The exhibition thus consisted of an itinerary of six churches in the centro storico of Naples. SS Marcellino e Festo, the first, was used to display five altarpieces long displaced from their original contexts or belonging to churches not included on the circuit. The most impressive of these was undoubtedly the remarkable five-metre high Circumcision of Christ (Fig. 2), not seen in public since the 1940s. Its original function as the visual and conceptual fulcrum over the nigh altar of the Jesuits' first church in NapLes, the Gesu Vecchio (the second stop on the itinerary), is echoed in Pino's evocation of a monumental temple interior, framing the first intimation of Christ's final sacrifice. The artist's early career was represented by three works: the first, a Holy Family tondo datable to Pino's last years in Siena, reveals what Zezza describes as a conscious display of the 'difficulta of drawing, the composition arranged within an ornate gilded frame in papier mache applied to the panel itself.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

A long-standing impediment to the appreciation of Pino's works has been their frequently diminished condition, under a combination of discoloured varnish, dirt and overpainting. With the restoration of almost every Neapolitan work exhibited, Pino's luminous colour contrasts, which were intended to inflame the viewer's emotional response, were once more made visible. This was seen to best effect in the radiant Transfiguration (Fig. 1), in which the viewer is more fully embroiled in the visionary experience than in Raphael's canonical depiction of the subject, from which this work nevertheless derives. The restorations encouraged one to scrutinise Pino's technique, and revealed an animated pictorial surface created by permitting the luminous gesso ground to show through translucent layers of oil paint applied with brisk brushwork. The high altarpiece (1573) of S Angelo a Nilo (the fourth church on the itinerary) displayed the artist's technique at its most accomplished, projecting a composition securely focused upon the triumphant Archangel Michael. In the background is a lyrical landscape reflecting the influence of Flemish artists in Naples. Pino's facility in fresco--which, as Zezza observes, undoubtedly benefited his technique in oil--and the marrying of figurative decoration contained in lunettes and vaults to a decorative framework, was seen to good effect in the Albertini Chapel in the Benedictine foundation of SS Severino e Sossio, the third exhibition site, directly opposite the first.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The original hues of the Crucifixion (1571) from S Giacomo degli Spagnoli (displayed in SS Marcellino e Festo) have been transformed into an unfortunate and unalterable subfusc. It is nevertheless a powerful image, inspired by the works of the prime mover of the 'maniera moderna', Michelangelo. Pino conflates and amplifies two celebrated drawings by the master: the first, of c. 1540, destined for Vittoria Colonna; the second of at least a decade later, with only the figures of the Virgin and St John surviving in an autograph form. Pino would have known Michelangelo's compositions through widely distributed engravings, although such is the sinuosity of Christ's body that the artist succeeds in recalling the original graphic source. In his addition of the Magdalene, Pino apparently displays his knowledge of Cort's engraved Crucifixion after Clovio (1568), the latter in turn filtering Michelangelo's example. The centrality Pino gives the saint is calculated to inspire penitent imitation in the devout observer, as she wraps herself around the foot of the cross, seeming to wet her hands in Christ's blood. The variety of Pino's responses to Michelangelo is seen in his later Crucifixion of 1577 in SS Severino e Sossio, where Christ's lithe body is seen above a commotion of figures below.

This timely and generously free exhibition, for which special lighting was installed and informative labels provided, offered not simply an opportunity to appraise a neglected artist, but also encouraged a renewed appreciation of the very fabric of historic Naples in which the works are embedded. In addition, it displayed how Pino's intent to move the spectator anticipates the pictorial innovations in oil upon textured canvas engendered in Neapolitan painting by Caravaggio in the early 1600s.