Alessandro Varotari

Sometime before 1620, Alessandro Varotari was sent to Rome to copy Titian's Bacchanals, the great mythological canvases the 16th-century master had painted for the Duke of Ferrara. That errand set the course of his career. He came home to Venice determined to paint like Titian, at a moment when most Venetian painters had drifted toward other fashions.

Known as Il Padovanino after his native Padua, where he was born in 1588, he had probably trained under a follower of Titian before settling in Venice around 1614. His warm colour and full, relaxed figures brought the older Venetian manner back to life just as Baroque taste was spreading, and gave it a new sense of space and grandeur. His sister Chiara, a painter in her own right, travelled with him and worked at his side.

His busy workshop is much of why the revival held. Giulio Carpioni and Pietro Liberi trained under him and carried the Titian-derived style into the next Venetian generation. Varotari died in Venice in 1649.