Pasquale Ottino
1578–1630 · Republic of Venice · Baroque, Veronese school
The story
Small and painted on slate, the Raising of Lazarus at the Galleria Borghese has passed under three names. The Borghese inventory of 1790 gave it to Ludovico Carracci. In 1893 the scholar Adolfo Venturi moved it to Alessandro Turchi of Verona, and in 1926 Roberto Longhi, comparing it with altarpieces in Verona churches, settled on Pasquale Ottino, Turchi's fellow pupil. That view has held.
Ottino, also called Pasqualotto, was born in Verona in 1578 and trained with Felice Brusasorci, a leading Veronese master. When Brusasorci died in 1605 and left a huge canvas of the Fall of Manna unfinished for the church of San Giorgio in Braida, Ottino and Turchi completed it together. The slate shows Christ at the moment he calls the dead man out of the tomb. Like his fellow townsman Marcantonio Bassetti, Ottino died in the plague that struck Verona in 1630.
