Andrea da Murano
( fl 1463; d 25 Feb 1512). Italian painter. He is first recorded
working as a gilder at S Zaccaria, Venice, in 1463–5. He was one of
a number of artists from the island of Murano. Among these he is
closest to Bartolomeo Vivarini, whose pupil he may have been. The
two collaborated in 1468 on a narrative canvas (destr.) for the
Scuola di S Marco, Venice, which probably depicted scenes from the
Life of Abraham. The rather harsh sculptural quality of his forms
owes much to the influence of Mantegna and Donatello in Padua, and
his work has often been associated (and sometimes confused) with
that of Andrea del Castagno. He did not, however, ignore the more
recent developments of Giovanni Bellini. His triptych depicting SS
Vincent Ferrer, Roch, Sebastian and Peter Martyr, with a lunette of
the Madonna of Mercy and Four Saints (Venice, Accad.), probably
painted in the late 1470s, shows a real concern with light and
colour. By the mid-1480s Andrea had settled in Castelfranco on the
mainland, chiefly painting altarpieces in the (by then well
established) Venetian sacra conversazione form. The altarpiece
(1484–1502) in the parish church at Trebaseleghe, nr Padua, is a
variation on the form, with Christ embracing the plague saints
Sebastian and Roch above and other saints and musicians below, all
showing the high degree of expression characteristic of his works.
It is one of his finest paintings and also perhaps the most
expensive Venetian altarpiece of its day. The altarpiece depicting
the Virgin Enthroned with SS Peter, Nicholas of Bari, John the
Baptist and Paul (1502; Mussolente, Santuario della Madonna dell’
Acqua) is typical of Andrea’s work and shows both the strengths and
limitations of his art: firm draughtsmanship and expressive
qualities combined with a rather conservative composition and
somewhat ungainly figures.
