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Pas(S)inelli, Lorenzo

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Pas(S)Inelli, Lorenzo,

an Italian painter, was born in 1629 at Bologna. He first studied under Simone Cantarini, and next with Flaminio Torre. He afterwards went to Venice, where he became enamored of the ornamental and brilliant style of Paul Veronese, and he made the works of that master his model, though he did not servilely imitate him. Lanzi says, "He borrowed from Veronese his effective and magnificent composition, but the airs of his heads and the distribution of his colors he obtained from another source; and though he never acquired the correctness of design which distinguishes the works of Torre, yet in this respect he surpassed Paolo." On his return to Bologna, Pasilelli found abundant employment in painting, principally for the churches. He was naturally inclined to create surprise by the display of copious, rich, and spirited compositions; such are his two pictures at the Certosa, representing Christ's Entrance into Jerusalem, and his Return into Limbo; and such, too, is his history of Coriolanus, in the Casa Ranuzzi — a piece found repeated in many collections. No one can behold these paintings without granting to Pasinelli a true painter's fire, great novelty of ideas, and an elevated character. With these gifts, he was sometimes too extravagant in his imitation of the attributes, pompous spectacles, and strange and novel draperies of Veronese, which he is thought to have carried to the extreme, as in his Preaching of John the Baptist in the Wilderness, which gave occasion to his rival Taruffi sarcastically to remark that, instead of the desert of Judaea, he discovered in it the piazza of St. Mark at Venice. He nevertheless knew how to moderate his fire according to his theme, as in his Holy Family, in the church of the Barefooted Carmelites, which partakes of the elegance and grace of Albano. The most esteemed of his paintings in the churches at Bologna are the Resurrection, in St. Francesca; and the Martyrdom of St. Ursula and her Companions, in the Palazzo Zambeccari. Pasinelli died in 1700. Basan erroneously states that Pasinelli etched some plates, and mentions two – St. John Preachinq in the Wilderness, and the Martyrdom of St. Ursula and other saints; but these plates were engraved by Lorenzini, a scholar of Pasinelli.