Michele da Verona, 'Coriolanus persuaded by his Family to spare Rome', probably about 1495-1510

After being exiled from Rome, the Roman general Coriolanus led the Volscian army to besiege the city. He was eventually persuaded to call off the attack by his mother, his wife and their children. In this painting, Coriolanus is shown kneeling before his family, his helmet on the ground beside him. One of his soldiers holds his horse, while the others await his commands. Behind them on the left is Rome, on the banks of the river Tiber.

Although once attributed to Vittore Carpaccio, this picture has all the hallmarks of the style of Michele da Verona: the wide, distant landscape; the mountains blocking out the sky; and the ball-shaped trees in neat rows. His slightly wooden figures are lit with a hard, sharp light; their faces have an almost marble-like smoothness.

Many of these elements can be seen in his vast Crucifixion, painted in 1501 for the monk’s refectory at San Giorgio in Braida, Verona (Brera, Milan), but the landscape here has lost some of the freshness of that picture. The composition is a reworking of his Adoration of the Magi of about 1510 (private collection), with its figures of horses and soldiers in a line in front of a wide landscape.

The painting seems to have still been in Verona in the early nineteenth century.