Paris Bordone

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Bordone, Paris (1500–71). Italian painter. Bordone was from Treviso, but he spent most of his life in Venice, where he is first recorded as a painter in 1518. Vasari says he was a pupil of Titian but that he soon left because he found his teaching disagreeable (Titian is then said to have stolen Bordone's first commission). Whatever the truth of these stories, Bordone's work was certainly strongly influenced by Titian and also by Giorgione, ‘for that master's style pleased him exceedingly’ ( Vasari). His most characteristic subjects included Holy Families in landscape settings, half-length figures of female beauties, and reclining nudes, but his most famous work, the Presentation of the Ring of St Mark to the Doge (c.1535, Accademia, Venice), is in a very different vein—a large, ceremonial composition that is remarkable for its spatial complexity. Bordone had a varied and successful career in Venice and is also said to have worked in France and Augsburg. However, in his later years his style, once warm and sensuous, became increasingly mechanical.

Bordone, Paris (bapt. Treviso, 5 July 1500; d Venice, 19 Jan. 1571). Italian painter, active mainly in Venice, where he is first recorded as a painter in 1518. Vasari says he was a pupil of Titian but that he soon left because he found his teaching disagreeable (Titian is then said to have stolen Bordone's first commission). Whatever the truth of these stories, Bordone's work was certainly strongly influenced by Titian and also by Giorgione, ‘for that master's style pleased him exceedingly’ (Vasari). His most characteristic subjects included Holy Families in landscape settings, half-length figures of female beauties, and reclining nudes, but his most famous work, the Presentation of the Ring of St Mark to the Doge (c.1535, Accademia, Venice), is in a very different vein—a large, ceremonial composition that is remarkable for its spatial complexity. Bordone had a varied and successful career in Venice and is also said to have worked in France and Augsburg. However, in his later years his style, once warm and sensuous, became increasingly mechanical.