an Italian painter of the Venetian Renaissance who, despite training with Titian, maintained a strand of Mannerist complexity and provincial vigor. Bordone is at his best in his smaller cabinet pieces, showing half-figures, semi-undressed men and women from mythology or religious stories in a muscular interaction despite the crowded space. In Paris Bordone subsequently executed many important mural paintings in Venice, Treviso and Vicenza, all of which have perished. In 1538 he was invited to France by Francis I, at whose court he painted many portraits, though no trace of them is to be found in French collections
