Madonna and Child with Saints

religious

In this large altarpiece the Virgin is accompanied by the plague saints: Roche, Sebastian, and Catherine of Alexandria, who are shown with the obscure early Christian papal martyr Fabianus. The influence of Titian, Bordone's teacher, as well as other earlier Venetian sources - Giorgione and the late monumental altars of Giovanni Bellini - is evident.

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About the Artist

Paris Bordone

1500 – 1571

Italian painter. He was from Treviso, but by 1518 he had settled in Venice. Vasari says he was a pupil of Titian, but found his teaching disagreeable and soon left (Titian is then said to have stolen his 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). He painted Giorgionesque pastoral scenes and mythologies that now seem rather hard and conventional compared with their inspiration, but they won him great popularity. Commissions came from patrons all over Europe, and he visited France and Germany. His most impressive work is generally agreed to be The Presentation of the Ring of St Mark to the Doge (Accademia, Venice, c.1535), a large ceremonial composition in Titian's grand manner.

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