Altobello Melone

Altobello Melone (c. 1490-1491 – before 3 May 1543) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.

Melone was born in Cremona. His work merges Lombard and Mannerist styles. In Cremona, he encountered the elder Girolamo Romanino. He was commissioned in December 1516 to fresco the Cathedral of Cremona, work which continued till 1518. His contract required that his frescoes be more beautiful than his predecessor, Boccaccio Boccaccino. He worked alongside Giovanni Francesco Bembo and Paolo da Drizzona.Francesco Prata was influenced by Melone.

Melone contributed frescoes to the Cathedral of Cremona in 1516. The Lamentation in the Brera comes in all probability from the church of Saint Lorenzo in Brescia and dated 1512. The stylistic convergence with Romanino is particularly obvious, such that the contemporary Venetian Marcantonio Michiel describes the Cremonese painter as a disciple of Armanin.

Moreover, in his masterpiece frescoes, Melone aims to be an interpreter of the anticlassicismo and “expressionist” language emerging in the work of Romanino. The seven scenes realized by Altobello evince a new forcefulness - Massacre of the Innocents is emblematic and manifest in the gestures and in the grotesque transformation of the faces.

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