Biography

Italian plaquette designer and gem-engraver (originally Galeazzo Mondella). A coherent group of 12 plaquette designs (from some 45 currently credited to this master: National Gallery of Art, Washington, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) are signed with initials or contractions of MODERNUS FECIT or OPUS MODERNI: both the signed and attributed groups establish a claim for the recognition of their author as the most accomplished designer of plaquettes in Italy in the Renaissance. References to the art of the western Veneto in the early work and to that of Venice in later examples make it virtually certain that Moderno was Galeazzo Mondella of Verona. The plaquettes display an intimate awareness of preceding and contemporary Veronese art, with special loyalties to Andrea Mantegna, the Falconetto family, Francesco Bonsignori and Liberale da Verona. Galeazzo's brother Girolamo Mondella (1464-1512) was a painter and an intimate of the Este court at Ferrara.

Moderno's earliest works (from about 1485) reflect both Ferrarese painting and a disposition towards the humanist themes favoured by the court. Ferrara also gave him the opportunity to see Bolognese art, in his early years he may have known Emilian art mainly from drawings. The same was true of Lombard art: he knew of Vincenzo Foppa in Brescia (which was then Venetian), but of art in Milan and Pavia perhaps only through Foppa's involvement there.