BASSANO (DA PONTE). - A family of painters commonly named after the city of the same name, rather than by the surname Da Ponte, active from the end of the 1400s to the first decades of the 1600s.
FRANCESCO THE ELDER (b. at Bassano in 1470, d. in 1540 or '41), began the Bassano school, whose characteristic product was a painting of a popular character that reduced the sacred stories almost to genre scenes, or in any case inserted them into the common life of its own time. He was influenced by the Veronese school and by Montagna. There are by him at Bassano the Madonna in throne between Sts. Bartholomew and John the Baptist and the Virgin between Sts. Peter and Paul.
IACOPO, his son (b. at Bassano in 1515 or '16, d. at Venice on 13 February 1592), is the most celebrated of the family. We know nothing of his first artistic education; from the observation of his works we infer a paternal training and we can presume with sufficient foundation a Venetian formation. It is not always easy to distinguish his autograph works from those of collaboration, because of the continual presence of assistants, which gives a workshop character to much of his production. But this predominance of the workshop must not lead one to devalue his art, as if qualifying it as commercial art; nor is Iacopo to be appreciated only as the conventional painter of fairs, of shepherds, of flocks and of tinkers, as many like to represent him to us. It is legitimate, rather, to affirm that he, in the Venetian painting of the sixteenth century, occupies a place apart for peculiar characteristics of spirituality and popular simplicity happily united.
Savory rustic art and a genuine rustic fragrance are found in his early works, such as the Flight into Egypt (Bassano, museum), the Supper at Emmaus (Cittadella, parish church), Christ and the Adulteress (Bassano, museum), Nebuchadnezzar and the Three Youths (ibid.).
Executed with an ingenuous popular directness is also the Madonna in throne with Matteo Soranzo (Bassano, museum); in which the last figure on the left is an effective portrait; and a most beautiful "piece of painting" can be seen in the little girl seated at the foot of the stairs playing with a dog, lively and true in her little dress with green stripes on faded red. The Last Supper of the Borghese Gallery brings to mind the young Velasquez. The Earthly Paradise of the Doria Gallery has been rightly considered an anticipation of Paul Brill or of Bruegel de' Velluti, but in it there is in addition a greater vital sense in the animals and a greater expression even in inanimate things. In the St. Roch of the Brera Gallery, Iacopo already uses the painting of touch, which he then continues in the St. Jerome of the Venice Gallery. In the St. Valentine baptizing Lucilla in the museum of Bassano the light, which kindles gleams wherever it strikes, gives magnificent relief to the shining garment of the kneeling saint, to the golden cross of the saint and to the vestments of the cleric outlined by luminous threads. The touch is always rapid, most effective and plastic. Indeed Boschini says, speaking of the drawing of the Venetians, that the greatest author of paintings in relief was Iacopo B. with the St. Lucilla. This is the Venetian plasticity of Tintoretto or of Veronese, obtained with color and with light, a plasticity internal to the picture and not sculptural in the manner of relief on an inert background.
FRANCESCO THE YOUNGER (b. at Bassano, in January 1549, d. at Venice on 3 July 1592), pupil and imitator of his father Iacopo, had as his characteristics the rapidity of touch and the sparkling of colors and lights.
We recall of him The Good Samaritan (Vienna, Hofmuseum); God Points Out the Way to the Promised Land (ibid.); the Last Supper (Madrid, Prado); the Journey of the Hebrews toward the Promised Land (Vienna, Hofmuseum); the Journey of Tobias with the Angel (Dresden, State gallery), the Adoration of the Magi (Rome, Borghese gallery). In his last years F. set out on the traces of Tintoretto to seek plasticity and movement, and so we have the Martyrdom of St. Catherine (Florence, Pitti gallery), the Rape of the Sabines (Turin, picture gallery) and the paintings of the ceiling in the hall of the Greater Council (Venice, Doge's Palace).
GIOVANNI BATTISTA (b. at Bassano in March 1553, d. 9 March 1613), second son of Iacopo, collaborated in his father's workshop and painted in 1598 the altarpiece of Gallio now in the museum of Bassano.
LEANDRO (b. at Bassano in June 1557, d. at Venice on 15 April 1622), like his brother Francesco, derived his painting from that of his father. We do not find however in him the coloristic and luministic gifts of Francesco, but hardness of touch and heaviness of forms.
Works of his are the Circumcision (Rosà, parish church), the Martyrdom of St. Lucy (Venice, church of St. George), The Rich Man and Lazarus (Vienna, Hofmuseum), the Adoration of the Magi (Borgo S. Sepolcro, gallery), the Resurrection of Lazarus (Venice, academy). He too, like his brother, painted in the Doge's Palace of Venice.
GIROLAMO (b. at Bassano in June 1566, d. at Venice on 8 November 1621), like his brother Giovanni Battista, coarsely imitated the forms of Iacopo. His is the Madonna and Saints in the museum of Bassano, a heavy and artificial work.
Bibliography9 works
Vincenzo Golzio