PARIS BORDONE BIOGRAPHY

 

Paris Bordone was born in Treviso in 1500.
From 1518 he resided in Venice, where his artistic career began in Tiziano’s Workshop, which also inspired his work. 

The young painter, after having lost a commission for a table of the Church of San Niccolò obtained instead, by Tiziano, is called to paint at the Loggia of Vicenza the Fresco “Noah with Children”. Through this painting, Bordone immediately demonstrates that he is capable of supporting with honour the confrontation with the Master who, in the same location, had already painted “Solomon’s Judgment”.

He became famous for his skills with the paintbrush, he worked not only in the churches of Venice, Treviso, Belluno, Agordo but also Milan and Crema. Afterwards his fame extended beyond the peninsula: he is called, in fact, at the Court of France but also by the wealthy bankers Fugger to honour the Augusta Palace in Bavaria.
When he returned to Venice he painted for Sigismondo Augusto, King of Poland, Mary of Austria of the Netherlands, Margherita wife of Emmanuel Philibert Duke of Savoy and Cardinal Granvelle Chancellor of Charles V. 

Seen through a historical and artistic point of view, Bordone’s personality appears to be one of a refined painter but second-class compared to artists such as Tiziano, Tintoretto and Veronese, his contemporaries. He is, therefore, considered one of the most wonderful painters of Venice, but his art is often considered superficial and unstable.

In fact, its style is not innovative: the main values of his paintings, such as the charm of its figures, the softness, the harmony of colour and the chiaroscuro, lose importance with the absence of exaggerated and schematic techniques typical of the Mannerism of Central Italy, present in Venice with Tintoretto and Pordenone.

Of his numerous works we recall the three paintings that are signed and dated: Male portrait of Vaduz of 1532, Portrait of Girolamo Crofft of 1540 and Betsabea at the fountain of 1552 for which there is the preparatory sketch in the Uffizi Cabinet.

There are also many pieces of art which have survived the course of the centuries and that we find scattered around the Italian peninsula.
Bordone died in Venice in 1571.