ORSI, Lelio

Italian painter and draughtsman. A prominent Emilian artist of the mid-16th century, he was influenced by Correggio as well as by the late Mannerist style of Giulio Romano. His large-scale works seem to have been mainly secular decorations, notably illusionistic façades, of which only fragments are extant. Their energy and expressiveness are apparent, however, in the surviving paintings of smaller dimensions. Orsi's sole documented architectural work is the Collegiata di S Stefano, Novellara (1567; study, Windsor Castle, Royal Library).

Lelio Orsi studied with his painter father, but very early on he incorporated into his polished, illusionistic style the two influences that remained primary throughout his life: Giulio Romano's exaggerated movement and excitability and Correggio's poignant passionGLOSSARYThe events leading up to Good Friday, beginning with Christ's arrest and ending with his burial. Portrayals of the Passion, which focus on the Suffering Christ, include depictions of Judas betraying Christ with a kiss, Peter cutting off Malchus's ear, the crown of thorns, and so on. and vibrant way of seeing. By 1538 Orsi had moved to a larger nearby town, Reggio Emilia, where he painted many architectural façades with illusionistic designs. Accused of involvement in a murder, he returned to his native Novellara in 1546, where he continued to create distinguished decorative works, especially as a painter of façades for the local nobility. Though he also completed a large project for the count of Novellara, providing everything from architectural drawings to decorative partitions for a villaGLOSSARYa residence in the country (in Italy); villas acquired palace-like characteristics from the Renaissance onwards., only fragments of any of these works survive.

The year 1554, spent in Rome, was decisive: there he absorbed Michelangelo's MannerismGLOSSARYA movement in Italian art from about 1520 to 1600. Developing out of the Renaissance, Mannerism rejected Renaissance balance and harmony in favor of emotional intensity and ambiguity. In Mannerist painting, this was expressed mainly through severe distortions of perspective and scale; complex and crowded compositions; strong, sometimes harsh or discordant colors; and elongated figures in exaggerated poses. In architecture, there was a playful exaggeration of Renaissance forms (largely in scale and proportion) and the greater use of bizarre decoration. Mannerism gave way to the Baroque. Leading Mannerists include Pontormo, Bronzino, Parmigianino, El Greco and Tintoretto., which stayed with him for life. He began to concentrate on making easelGLOSSARYStand on which a painting is supported while the artist works on it. The oldest representation of an easel is on an Egyptian relief of the Old Kingdom (c. 2600-2150 BC). Renaissance illustrations of the artist at work show all kinds of contrivances, the commonest being the three-legged easel with pegs, such as we still use today. Light folding easels were not made until the 18th and 19th centuries, when painters took to working out of doors. The studio easel, a 19th-century invention, is a heavy piece of furniture, which runs on castors or wheels, and served to impress the c1ients of portrait painters. Oil painters need an easel which will support the canvas almost vertically or tip it slightly forward to prevent reflection from the wet paint, whereas the watercolourist must be able to lay his paper nearly flat so that the wet paint will not run down. The term 'easel-painting' is applied to any picture small enough to have been painted on a standard easel. paintings of mostly mythological and religious subjects; they indicated the energy and expressiveness of his monumental works, and their jeweled technique made them beautiful in themselves. By 1576 Orsi was probably back in Reggio Emilia.