Bassano (family da Ponte)

Jacopo Bassano

Bassano, Jacopo (Jacopo da Ponte) (bc1510-18, 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 he 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, he always remained alert to the latest developments in art, sometimes borrowing details from Lorenzo Lotto's works 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 D