Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain04cham).pdf/348

 are in Venice: In S. Caterina, two scenes from the Legend of St. Catherine and the Triumph of Virginity; in S. Giustina, St. Justina, one of his best works; in S. Maria del Pianto, a Madonna and Saints; in S. Bartolommeo, the Death of the Virgin; in S. Lione, a Crucifixion; in S. Giovanni Evangelista, four pictures; and in the Academy, a Christ and the Money Changers. Portraits by him in Louvre and Dresden Gallery; Young Man and Young Woman, Berlin Museum.—Ch. Blanc, École vénitienne.

VECCHIETTA, IL, born at Castiglione di Valdorcia in the Sienese territory in 1412 (?), died in Siena, June 6, 1480. Sienese school. Real name Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni di Lando; called Il Vecchietta (the little old man), perhaps from the age of many of his habitual models. Despite the dryness of his style he was highly esteemed during his lifetime, and stands among the best painters of the later Sienese school. His masterpiece, an altarpiece in the Cathedral at Pienza, painted about 1447, is a noble work. It represents the Ascending Virgin, our Lord, Saints Catherine and Agatha, Popes Calixtus and Pius II. (who ordered the picture), and in the upper part, six saints, patriarchs, or prophets. "In this work," says a late writer, "Vecchietta joins to the sweetness of the Sienese school a severity of drawing and a dramatic force worthy of Florence." Among his other works are frescos in the Hospital at Siena (1441) and a relic press (1445), also the decoration of several ceilings and part of the tribune of the Sienese Baptistery (1449-50), as well as an altarpiece, in the Sienese Academy and a Madonna and Saints in the Uffizi, dated 1457. Vecchietta also painted frescos in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, of which a St. Catherine (1460), and a Virgin of Mercy sheltering the people under her mantle and attended by saints, still survive. Much gilding, stamped and cut out in patterns, according to the fashion of the time, marks these works, which are most carefully elaborated in a precise, formal, and dry manner. This is also noticeable in Vecchietta's bronze and marble works, of which he executed many. He was also an architect and a goldsmith.—C. & C., Italy, iii. 59; Vasari, ed. Le Mon., iv. 209; ed. Mil., iii. 75, 87; Müntz, Tour du Monde (1882), No. 1117; Müntz, À travers la Toscane, 342; Perkins, Hist. Handbook Italian Sculpture (London, 1882), 67.

VECELLI (Vecellio), FRANCESCO, born at Cadore about 1475, died in 1560. Venetian school. Brother, probably younger, of Titian; went about 1487 to Venice, where he studied first under Zuccato, and later with Giovanni Bellini. Having left the school of the Bellini to become a soldier, he returned to Venice after the League of Cambrai and studied with his brother, whose jealousy he is questionably said to have aroused. His earliest picture is a Madonna, in the Genova Chapel at the Pieve di Cadore, which shows that he began to paint with almost as much promise as Titian himself, but his later efforts proved that he was not of the stuff of which great painters are made, and he finally settled down to commercial pursuits at Cadore. In his Madonna with Saints, in S. Vito di Cadore, his style is vastly below that of Titian's. His frescos in S. Salvatore, Venice, and his pictures on the shutters of the organ (1530) show more power, more freedom of handling, and greater spirit than any other of his extant works; but they lack distinction, and the figures are strained in action and overweighted in muscle. His Nativity, in Casa Ponte at Fonzaso, near Belluno, has been assigned to Titian. Other pictures by him are in the Venice Academy and the galleries of Modena, Dresden, and Berlin.—C. & C., Titian, ii. 476; Ch. Blanc, École vénitienne.

VECELLI, LAVINIA, portrait, Titian, Berlin Museum; canvas, H. 3 ft. 3-1/2 in. × 2 ft. 7-1/2 in. A robust girl, dressed in a yellowish flowered silk, raises with both hands, to the level of her forehead, a silver dish of