Marco D'Oggione

Marco D'Oggione

Milanese painter, b. at Oggionno near Milan about 1470; d. probably in Milan, 1549. This painter was on of the chief pupils of Leonardo da Vinci, whose works he repeatedly copied. He was a hard-working artist, but his paintings are wanting in vivacity of feeling and purity of drawing, while, in his composition, it has been well said "Intensity of color does duty for intensity of sentiment." He copied the "Last Supper" repeatedly, and one of his best copies is in the possession of the Royal Academy of Arts in England. Of the details of his life we know nothing — not even the date of his important series of frescoes painted for the church of Santa Maria della Pace. His two most notable pictures — one in Brera (representing St. Michael), and the other in the private gallery of the Bonomi family (representing the Madonna) — are signed Marcus. Others of his works are to be seen at Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Turin, the one in Russia being a clever copy of the "Last Supper" by Leonardo. Lanzi gives 1530 as the date of his death, but various writers in Milan say it took place in 1540, and the latest accepted date is the one which we give as 1549. He cannot be regarded as an important artist, or even a very good copyist, but in his pictures the sky and mountains and the distant landscapes are always worthy of consideration, and in these we probably get the painter's best original work.

Lanzi, Storia Pittorica (Bassano, 1509); Agostino Santa Gostini, Descrizione delle Pitture di Milano (Milan, 1671).

GEORGE CHARLES WILLIAMSON