Andrea Schiavone. A Venetian Renaissance artist straddling the worlds of Titian, Tintoretto and Parmigianino

Right from the outset, the art of Andrea Meldolla, better known as Schiavone (Zara, circa 1510-15 – Venice, 1563) divided Venetian public opinion for his evident nonconformity. A fine draughtsman and prolific etcher, he was appreciated by Giorgio Vasari, who in 1540 commissioned a Battle between Charles V and Barbarossa from him, subsequently given to Ottaviano de’ Medici. In his Lives, Vasari declared that in Schiavone, he saw the embodiment of a “certain manner that is used in Venice, that is dashed off, or rather, sketched, without being in any respect finished”. Now the city celebrates the artist in the first retrospective to be ever dedicated to him, examining Schiavone’s production thanks to many international loans and the latest critical studies, together with his relationship with the more well-known Venetian artists of the time. Schiavone’s work, admired by Marco Boschini and which stimulated the enthusiasm of El Greco, was solitary, non-academic and in some ways rebellious; an evident feature is his role as precursor in the definition of a new synthetic style, with a sometimes almost “informal” touch, that was able to influence even Titian and Tintoretto. Making use of loans from some of Europe’s leading museums – from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna to the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and from the National Gallery and British Museum of London to the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden – this exhibition will finally make it possible to rediscover this brilliant artist as an independent master, but also to appreciate his diversified activities in the fields of drawings, prints, illustrated books and the applied arts. 

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