Marcello Venusti

MARCELLO VENUSTI (Como 1512 - 1515 - Rome).
"Calvary".
Oil on panel.
We thank Mrs. Francesca Parrilla for her help in the expertise of the piece.
Measurements: 24 x 15,5 cm; 47,5 x 41 cm (frame).
It is a painting belonging to the circle of Marcello Venusti, which is deduced from the aesthetics with which the work has been conceived, which starts from a realistic pictorial language, very influenced by the art of sculpture, with a great symbolic sense that allows us two readings, the symbolic and the realistic. There is importance for the detail, with a meticulous description of the objects, nothing escapes the eye of the painter, and in this case despite the sobriety of the scene, the treatment of the cross, and the skull that lies at the feet present a delicate detailed treatment, refinement is also abandoned, real beings appear without idealistic intention. In this particular case the piece presents a great compositional similarity with the piece "Christus am Kreuz", which belongs to the collection of paintings of the state of Bavaria. The German piece attributed to Marcello Venusti is dated between 1515 and 1579.
Marcello Venusti was an Italian Mannerist painter active in Rome in the mid-16th century. A native of Mazzo di Valtellina, near Como, he is said to have been a pupil of Perino del Vaga. He is best known for a scale oil copy (now Museo di Capodimonte, Naples) of Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, which was completed during the master's lifetime and met with his approval. This is the best record of what the fresco looked like before drapery was added to many of the nude figures in the 1560s, although Venusti discreetly adjusted some of the scale discrepancies between Michelangelo's figures. Several altarpieces for Roman churches, such as for the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, are also attributed to Venusti.