Bordone, Paris

▪ Italian painter

in full  Paris Paschalinus Bordone , Bordone also spelled  Bordon 

born 1500, Treviso, Republic of Venice [Italy]

died Jan. 19, 1571, Venice

      Renaissance Venetian painter of religious, mythological, and anecdotal subjects.

      Bordone was a pupil of Titian but did not remain in his workshop for long. He spent most of his working life in Venice, though he visited France and is also said to have visited Augsburg and worked for the Fugger family sometime in the 1540s. Most of his pictures cannot be dated with any certainty.

      Bordone painted many scenes of the Madonna and saints seated in a landscape (a genre known as sacra conversazione), along with other religious subjects such as “Christ Among the Doctors” (Gardner Museum, Boston). His finest historical painting is “Fisherman Consigning a Ring to the Doge” (1534–35; Academy, Venice), which has typically bright colours, heavy Titianesque figures, and complex architectural motifs derived from the work of Sebastiano Serlio. Bordone's style gradually became more Mannerist, with warmer colours, tightly curled draperies, and figures in oddly tilted poses occupying the extreme foreground against a distant landscape. Though he continued to paint Holy Families in outdoor settings, late in his career he also painted a series of groups of blonde, statuesque female figures. Among these erotic paintings are “Diana with Two Nymphs” (State Art Collections, Dresden) and “Venus with Flora” (Hermitage, St. Petersburg). Bordone also painted portraits throughout his career.

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