Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/164

 PORTA— PKETL 133 Volute. He attempted to combine Florentme design with Venetian ooloor- ing ; but his figures are frequently ex- aggerated in attitude and action ; and his colouring is, occasionally, feeble. He painted at Borne, in the SalaBegia, for Pius IV., and in the library of St. Mark, at Venice, he represented the Prophets and Sibyls. Works. Venice, church of the Servi, the Assumption of the Virgin : in the Frari, the Purification : Murano, church degli Angeli, ,the Descent from the Cross. Dresden Gallery, the same sub- ject. Louvre, the Expulsion from Para- dise. {Ridolfi, Lanzu) POUSSIK, Gasfab, b. at Rome in 1613, d. in 1675. He was a French- man by descent, his family name was Dughet; but he appears to have adopted the name of Poussin from his cele- brated master Nicolas, who married Gasper's sister. The early landscapes of Gaspar have a great affinity with those of Nicolas, and display the same fine feeling for form, combined with a bolder execution and more pic- turesque effect; qualities more fully developed in his later works. Owing to his habit of painting on dark grounds, his pictures have become low in tone, which ^ves a gloomy character to the foregrounds; but the clear, soft per- spective of the middle ground allures the eye into the distance. His scenes are generally mountainous and woody. Ramdohr, who places Gaspar second only to Claude, has remarked on the solemn character of Gaspar's works, which impels the mind to reflection tend- ing to the melancholy. The *' Italian Landscape," in the National Gallery, from the Colonna Palace, in Rome, is an admirable example of the higher class of fancy composition of this great land- scape-painter, and an admirable ex- ample of his free and masterly exe- cution; it is also exempt from that sombreness from which many of his compositions now suffer. His tempera pictures in Rome show that much of the darkness, now apparently charac- teristic of his works, is peculiar to his oil pictures, and is the result of me- thod, or time, or both ; some are coated with dirt and varnish, a covering more fatal to the effect of landscapes than of figure pieces. The enchanting scenes of Tivoli, Frascati, Albano, and other places in the vicinity of Rome, were the most frequent subjects of his pencil. Gaspar's figures are said to have been frequentiy designed by Nicolas Poussin. Works, Rome, San Martino a' Monti, scenes in fresco, from the Lives of Elias and EUsha : Doria and Colonna Palaces, many landscapes in tempera. Berlin Gallery, three landscapes. Lon- don, National Gallery, a land-storm. Shepherds seeking Refuge for thek Flocks; a landscape, with Abraham and Isaac; landscape, with Dido and Eneas ; a woody landscape. Evening — a view near Albano; an Italian land- scape, mountain scenery; view of La Riccia. {Pascoli, JRamdokn). PRETI, Cav, Mattia, called II Cav. CAiiABRESE, b, at Tavema, Feb. 24, 1613, d, at Malta, Jan. 13, 1699. Nea- politan School. The scholar of his brother Gregorio, in Rome, and of Guercino, whom he sought out in Cento, in consequence of having seen his Santa Petronilla. Preti travelled much; he visited Paris and Madrid^ and studied the works of all the great masters; his drawing was bold but incorrect ; his colouring is, in general, sombre in the shadows, with a prevailing ashy tone everywhere. He possessed extraordinary facility of execution, and chiefly represented martyrdoms, and other tragical or mournful scenes; a reflection of his own career, in which a homicide was by no means an extra- ordinary incident; he was a skilful swordsman, but there appears to have