Jacopo Bassano

c. 1510 - 1592 • Italian • Painter • Italian Renaissance

"You must know, Oh!, Domenico, that during my journey I saw a miracle-a piece of black drapery that looked like white." - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Jacopo's father and brothers were also artists, but his work was the most innovative and enduring. Named after the small town in which he was born and spent most of his life, Jacopo was trained in and kept current of styles and trends in nearby VENICE. In fact, a portrait of Jacopo in the role of musician appears in one of VERONESE's great Venetian feast paintings, Marriage at Cana (1563). However, J acopo remained faithful to what is called his "rustic" manner, exemplified by his Pastoral Landscape of the 1560s, in which women and children are involved in farm duties-milking a cow and feeding sheep-while a man carries home a heavy load. The road he travels leads to a landscape of hills and trees, painted with an energetic brush, beneath a sky full of scudding clouds. For works like this, Jacopo is known as a developer of GENRE paintings. He was admired by TIEPOLO, who wrote the words quoted above in a letter to his son. The painting to which Tiepolo refers is Saint Lucille Baptized by Saint Valentine, one of Jacopo's finest works, in which the thin strokes of color on Saint Lucille's clothing look almost black close up, and at a distance become a shiny white.