
Venetian School painter Paris Bordone (1500-1571) combined the rich color of Titian's workshop with theatrical architectural settings and striking depictions of women. Born in Treviso, he moved to Venice at age eight and apprenticed briefly and unhappily with Titian, according to Giorgio Vasari. When Bordone won his first church altarpiece commission in 1523, Titian allegedly took the work for himself, deepening their rift. Despite this tension, Bordone spent most of his career in Venice, developing a style that eventually incorporated Central Italian Mannerist elements alongside Venetian color.
Bordone gained public attention after winning the competition to paint Fisherman Consigning a Ring to the Doge (1534-35) for the Accademia in Venice, a work characterized by bright Titianesque color and complex architectural settings derived from Sebastiano Serlio's treatises. In 1538, he traveled to France to work at Francis I's court at Fontainebleau, where he encountered Rosso Fiorentino and Primaticcio, absorbing Mannerist influences that appeared in later works featuring warmer colors and oddly tilted figures. He excelled at cabinet paintings of beautiful women, both in portraits and mythological subjects. Bordone's paintings hang at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Hermitage, the Louvre, and the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds his Portrait of a Man in Armor with Two Pages.
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