BONIFACIO VERONESE (Bonifacio de' Pittati). — Painter, b. in Verona c. 1487, d. in Venice in 1553. Few of his works are dated; none is known to be certain before 1530, by which time B. already appears as a mature artist; on the other hand, the works from his workshop are extremely numerous, and it would be difficult to define the part due to the master; hence it is hard to reconstruct his personality.
He derives directly from the Venetian environment, above all from Titian and Palma the Elder, whose tonalism he refines with a greater richness of luminosity, as is shown by the works usually attributed to the period before 1530 (The Holy Family with Saints in the Louvre, The Holy Family with Tobias and the Angel in the Ambrosiana in Milan, The Holy Family with Saints in the Museum of Boston, where the Titianesque prototype of the saint is clear, The Holy Family in the Romitaggio in Leningrad, where also the foliage of the background recalls Titian’s landscapes). From 1530 to 1533 new motifs intervene, thanks to a more rigorous drawing; this evolution can be followed in the series of paintings for the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, e.g. in The Judgment of Solomon (1533), and in the Madonna and Saints in the Royal Palace of Venice (1533), with draperies stiffer than usual and a diminished richness of colour. Subsequently, the darker colour range and a greater elasticity in the figures show the influence of Tintoretto; but in B. dramatic accents are never noted, because every figurative motif acquires in his painting a narrative and decorative value, so much so that his biblical and evangelical scenes are merely occasions for the description of sumptuous settings and the representation of scenes of elegant Venetian life (most famous are The Finding of Moses in Brera and The Rich Man at the Accademia in Venice [1545–50]).