Francesco Torbido

In 1534 the bishop of Verona, Gian Matteo Giberti, had the apse of his cathedral repainted. The designs came from Mantua, drawn by Giulio Romano, who had been Raphael's chief assistant in Rome. The painter hired to put them on the wall was Francesco Torbido, and the Assumption in the half-dome and the Nativity and Coronation above the choir are his hand carrying another man's invention.

Torbido was born in Venice and made his career in Verona. Documents call him Francesco India, after his father Marco, and in Verona they knew him as il Moro, which is the form the Brera still prints beside his pictures. He married a daughter of the Giusti, an old Veronese family, and that settled him in the city for good.

Most of what is securely his are portraits, half-length sitters against plain grounds, so the cathedral frescoes stand apart from the rest of his work. He went on taking commissions into old age and died in Verona in 1562. His pupil Battista d'Angolo married his daughter and took his master's nickname, signing himself Battista del Moro.