Biography

Italian painter. He moved from Venice to Treviso c. 1517, where he is well documented (though there is little about his painting). In 1518-19 he married Camilla, daughter of the painter Pier Maria Pennacchi. A coherent body of work executed between 1518 and 1528 has been reconstructed.

Capriolo's first secure work, the Adoration of the Shepherds (Treviso, Museo Civico), signed and dated 1518, has a formal structure reminiscent of the late style of Giovanni Bellini, with the broader chromatic range of Palma Vecchio and a crepuscular light that recalls the Venetian works of Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo or Giovanni da Asola (active 1512-31). The Assumption in Treviso Cathedral, commissioned in 1520, shows, in its spiralling movement, the influence of the contemporary frescoes of Pordenone in the nearby Malchiostro Chapel. In the Legend of the Doubting Midwife (Treviso, Museo Civico), signed and dated 1524, the influence of Savoldo is greater than that of Palma. This is also apparent in the altarpiece of the parish church of Ponzano Veneto (Treviso), dated 1525. The portrait of Lelio Torelli (Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum), signed and dated 1528, Capriolo's last known work, seems by contrast to reflect local models of portraiture and lies somewhere between the styles of Sebastiano Florigerio and Bernardino Licinio.

Other works assigned to Capriolo include: the altarpieces of the parish churches of Cavasagra and Spercenigo, near Treviso; the Adoration of the Shepherds in the sacristy of Serravalle Cathedral at Vittorio Veneto; a fragment of a Nativity (Venice, Museo Correr); two paintings of the Virgin and Child with Saints (Bucharest, Museum of Art; Conegliano, Museo Civico del Castello); and the Portrait of a Musician (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), previously attributed to Pordenone. Capriolo was murdered by his wife's stepfather, after years of litigation about her dowry.