Francesco Bissolo

Francesco Bissolo belonged to the last generation trained directly by Giovanni Bellini, the painter who taught Venice to build a figure out of colour and soft light rather than hard outline. Bissolo kept that lesson faithfully for decades after his master died in 1516, long after younger men like Titian had pushed Venetian painting somewhere bolder.

He is best remembered for calm devotional pictures of the Madonna and the saints. For the church of the Redentore in Venice he painted Christ handing a crown to Saint Catherine, a work now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia. In the cathedral of Treviso, a town on the Venetian mainland, he left a Saint Justina. His gentle, even manner changed little across a long life that reached 1554.