Born in Verona between 1486 and 1488, Paolo Cavazzola (also known as Morando) was trained in the workshop of Francesco Morone in that city. Few records provide any information about his life; Vasari reported in his 'Lives' that he never left his hometown. The artist's first known signed and dated work, from 1508, is the 'Madonna and Child' in the Cagnola Collection in Gazzada, near Varese. In 1509 and 1510, Cavazzola is known to have worked with Morone on the fresco of the Pentecost miracle in S. Anastasia in Verona; and in 1510 and 1511, he received payments that can be related to the completion of a fresco with the Annunciation in the Cappella di S. Biagio in Verona's church of SS. Nazaro e Celso. A signed Madonna with Christ and the young John, formerly in the palace collection in Berlin, was dated October 1514. The signed 'Lamentation of Christ' in the Museo di Castelveccchio in Verona, also mentioned by Vasari, was painted in 1517. In it - again according to Vasari - Morone is said to have been portrayed in one of the secondary figures. The signed and dated 'Portrait of a Man' in Dresden's Staatliche Kunstsammlungen and the 'Madonna and Child' in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan were painted in 1518. In 1519, Cavazzola restored a statue of St Libera for the brotherhood of SS. Siro e Libera, of which he, like numerous other Verona artists, was a member. Since he did so in the house of a "maestro Vivian", who is not further identified, at this point the artist appears to have been unmarried and without a household of his own. The signed 'Portrait of a Lady' in Milan's Trivulzio Collection is also dated to 1519. On 29 April 1522, Cavazzola is named as a witness in a legal proceeding in his home town, but an entry in the register of the SS. Siro e Libera brotherhood documents that he died on 13 August of that year. The earliest works attributed to Cavazzola on the basis of their style, probably still from the first decade of the sixteenth century, clearly show the influence of Francesco Morone, but also that of Caroto, with simultaneous borrowings from pictorial inventions of Mantegna and Bellini. In the second decade his works reveal the increasing influence of Lombard artists - at first Vincenzo Foppa and Andread Solario, later Leonardo da Vinci. In addition to his activity as a fresco and panel painter, mainly of religious subjects, Cavazzola also excelled as a portraitist.
