PORDENONE
281
PORDENONE
"Regillo". In 1536 he was again in Venice, carrying
out some commissions for the Council of Ten, and
decorating the ceilings of three of their halls. These
works were so thoroughly approved that further com-
missions were
given him by the
.Senate, but unfor-
tunately ever}--
thing carried out
by Pordenone at
that time has per-
ished. From Ven-
ice he went to
P'errara, to ex-
ecute certain com-
missions for
Ercole II, Duke
of Ferrara, but he
was there a short
time when he
died.
Rumours were that he had been poisoned by one of the Ferrarese artists, who was jealous of his rep- utation, but Pordenone (Painting by himaelO other reports
state that he caught a severe chill after eating, and a third statement says that he died from an epidemic at that time raging in the city. A con- temporary artist, however, gives his family name as Cuticello and not Licinio. He states definitel}' that the artist was poisoned by Ferrarese artists at the Angel Inn, Ferrara. His tomb is in the church of San Paolo in Ferrara. Better than most of his contemporaries, he was acquainted with the laws of perspective, and his fresco work is always well drawn, learned, agreeable, and pleasant. He pos- sessed great facility and considerable power of originality, and being a man of strong and verj' determined religious opinions, devoted himself heart- ily to church decoration, and carried it out with exceedingly fine results. There was a strong com- petition between him and Titian in Venice, and there are statements in Venetian MSS. of the time which imply that certain works of Pordenone's were intentionally destroyed by persons who were jealous of the honour and position of Titian. At the present day, to understand his painting, it is necessarj' to visit the various churches round Pordenone, as the quality of his workmanship cannot be appreciated from the few frescoes which remain in Venice, nor from the small number of easel pictures which can be attributed to him with any definite authority. He had many pupils who copied his work cleverly, and who probably did most of the smaller pictures at- tributed to him. Perhaps his finest are those in the cathedrals of San Daniele, Spilimbergo, Treviso, and Cremona; in Munich there is a portrait of himself with his pupils, and there is another of himself in a private gallery in Rome. He appears to have founded his ideas in Venice very much on those of Giorgione and Titian, but in the cathedrals already mentioned his work is more natural and original.
RiDOLFi. Le Unririalif lieW Arte (Venice. 1648), and the Mol- iensi MS., in the Venice Librar>'.
George Charles Williamson.
Pordenone, Ononir of, Franciscan missionary of a Czech familv named .Mattiussi. b. at Villanova near Pordenone, Friuli, Italy, about 1286; d. at Udine, 14 Jan., 1331. About 1300 he entered the Franciscan Order at Udine. Towards the middle of the thirteenth century the Franciscans were commissioned by the Holy See to undertake missionary work in the interior
of Asia. Among the missionaries sent there were John
Piano Carpini, WUham Rubruquis, and John of
Montecorvino. Odoric was called to follow them, and
in April, 1318, started from Padua, crossed the Black
Sea to Trebizond, went through Persia by way of the
Tauris, .Sultaniah, where in 1318 John XXII had
erected an archbishopric, Kasham, Yezd, and Persepo-
hs; he also ^^sited Farsistan, Khuzistan, and Chal-
dea, and then went back to the Persian Gulf. From
Hormuz he went to Tana on the Island of Salsette,
north of Bombay. Here he gathered the remains of
Thomas of Tolentino, Jacopo of Padua, Pietro of
Siena, and Demetrius of Tiflis, Franciscans who, a
short time before, had suffered martyrdom, and took
them with him so as to bury them in China. From
Salsette he went to Malabar, Fondaraina (Flandrina)
that lies north of Calicut, then to Cranganore that
is south of Calicut, along the Coromandel Coast,
then to Meliapur (Madras) and Ceylon. He then
passed the Xicobar Islands on his way to Lamori, a
kingdom of Sumoltra (Sumatra); he also visited Java.
Banjarmasin on the southern coast of Borneo, and
Tsiompa (Champa) in the southern part of Cochin
China, and finally reached Canton in China. From
Cf nton he travelled to Zaitoum, the largest Chinese
seaport in the Middle Ages, and Che-kiang, and went
overland by way of Fu-cheu, the capital of the
province of Fokien, to Quinsay (Hangcheufu), cele-
brated by Marco Polo. He remained in China and
went to Xanking, Yangchufu, and finally travelled by
the great canal and the Hwangho River to Khan-balig
or Peking, the capital of the Great Khan. At that
time the aged Montecor\'ino was still archbishop in
Peking, where Odoric remained three years. On
his return journey he went overland by way of
Chan-si through Tibet, from there apparently by way
of Badachschan to the Tauris and Armenia, reaching
home in 1330.
In May, 1330, at the request of his superior, Gui- dotto, Odoric dictated an account of his travels to Brother William of Solagna while at the monastery of St. Anthony at Padua. According to another version Henry of Glatz, who was at that time staj-ing at the papal court at Avignon, made notes of the accounts giV'Cn by Odoric's travelling comjianions and wrote them out at Prague in 1340. Unfortunately Odoric accepted many fabulous stories and for a long period it was doubted whether he had really seen all the places and regions he described. His narrative, though, is veracious, and he is the first European traveller from whom are learned many peculiarities of the Chinese people and country which Marco Polo did not mention, because he had grown accustomed to them. It is to be regretted that he does not give a more detailed account of Tibet and Lhasa, the capital of the Dalai-Lama, which he was the first European to enter. TTie account of his travels was widely spread by Mandeville's plagiarisms from them, Mandeville's work being exceedingly popular in the later Middle Ages and much used as a manual by geographers of that period. Numerous manuscripts of Odoric's travels were current in Italy, France, German}-, and England. They were first printed at Pesaro. A Latin version appeared in Marcellino da Civezza's "Storia universale delle mlssioni Francescanc", III (Rome, 18.59), 739-81; an English tran.slation was made by Yule in his work "Cathav and the Way Thither", I (London, 1866), 1-162; a French version with very good notes was made by Henri Cordier " Les voyages en Asie au XIV« siecle du bienheureux frere Odoric de Pordenone" (Paris, 1891).
Besides the editions already given may be mentioned: Asquini, Vita e viaggi del B. Odorico da Udine (Udine, 1737) ; Kun8TMann, Die Missionrn in Indien u. China in XIV. Jahrh. in Hislor.-polit. Blatter. XXXVIII (Munich, 1856), 507-37; Richthofen. China, I (Berlin, 1877), 617-S; Domenichelli, Sopra la vita e i viaggt del bealo Odorico da Pordenone dell' ordine de' Minori (Prato, 1881); Gnauck, Odorich von Pordenone, ein Orienlreisender d. XIV. Jahrh. (Leipzig, 1895). OtTO HaRTIO.
