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Jacopo Bassanoe Biography
(b. c.1510-18, Bassano del Grappa; d.
1592, Bassano)
Italian painter
The most celebrated member of a family of
artists who took their name from the small
town of Bassano, about 65 km. from Venice.
Apart from a period in the 1530s when Jacopo Bassano trained
with Bonifazio Veronese in Venice, Jacopo
worked in Bassano all his
life. his father, Francesco
the Elder (c.1475-1539), was a village
painter and Jacopo always retained something
of the peasant artist, even though the
influence of, for example, the fashionable
etchings of Parmigianino is evident in his work. |
Even though most of his career was spent in small
or middle-sized towns on the mainland, Jacopo Bassano always remained alert to the latest
developments in art, sometimes borrowing
details from Lorenzo Lotto paintings in
his portraits. A pioneer in
genre scenes and landscape painting,
engravings were critical in forming Jacopo's
style, particularly those by and after
artists like Albrecht Dürer,
Raphael, and
Parmigianino.
By 1534 Jacopo dal Ponte had found his direction in the art of
nearby Venice, learning as much from the chiaroscuro and luxurious color of
Titian paintings as from his teachers.
Jacopo Bassano won some
renown in Venice itself, and became one of
the Veneto's most influential artists in
the mid-1500s.
He also had the ability to devise new ideas
for compositions that possessed great force
of expression. Trained in his
father's studio, Jacopo dal Ponte broke away from the
local popular and devotional tradition by
studying prints by Raphael and developments
in Mannerism. his early Mannerist paintings used elongated figures and brilliant
colors. |