Paris Bordon

Paris Bordon, or Bordone, was a Venetian painter, who while training with the great Titian (1485 – 1576), maintained a style of Mannerist complexity and provincial vigor. His paintings are considered of unequal merit, and often repeat postures, including the drape of an arching arm over the superior portion of the canvas.

He was born in Treviso, then relocating to Venice to train with Titian, but according to Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574), it was an unsatisfactory experience for the artist. From the 1520s, Bordon’s works include the Holy Family in Florence, Sacra Conversazione with Donor (Glasgow), and Holy Family with St. Catherine (Hermitage Museum). The St. Ambrose and a Donor (1523) is now in Brera. In 1525, Bordon painted an altarpiece for the church of S. Agostino in Crema, a Madonna with St. Christopher and St. George (now in the Palazzo Tadini collection in Lovere). A second altarpiece, Pentecost, is now in the Brera gallery.

In 1534, he painted his large-scale masterpiece for the Scuola di San Marco, a canvas of the Fisherman delivering the Marriage Ring of Venice to the Doge (Accademia in Florence). Bordon is best at his smaller cabinet pieces, showing half-figures, semi-nude men and women from mythology or religious stories in a muscular interaction, despite the crowded space. He subsequently executed many important mural paintings in Venice, Treviso and Vicenza, all of which have perished. In 1538 he was invited to France by King Francis I (1494 – 1547), at whose court he painted many portraits, though no trace of them is to be found in French collections, the two portraits at the Louvre being later acquisitions. On his return journey to Italy he also worked for the Fugger palace in Augsburg.

The National Gallery of London has his Daphnis and Chloe and a Portrait of a Lady, whilst his Holy Family is at Bridgewater House, England. Other important works of his are the Madonna in the Tadini collection in Lovere, the paintings in the Duomo of Treviso, two mythological pictures at the Galleria Borghese and the Doria palace in Rome, his Chess Players in Berlin, a little-known portrait of superb quality in the possession of the landgrave of Hesse at Kronberg, and a Baptism of Christ in Philadelphia. Of his works in the Uffizi Gallery are, Portrait of Teofilo Folegno and, Portrait of a Knight.

(This text is taken from the www.wikipedia.org entry on Paris Bordone, available under, GNU Free Documentation license.)