Giovanni Cariani

Giovanni Cariani belonged to two places at once. He was born around 1485 near Bergamo, in the Lombard hills, but his family moved to Venice and he learned to paint there, first in the workshop of Giovanni Bellini and then among the young followers of Giorgione, whose soft, dreamy manner was reshaping Venetian art.

He took what the great Venetians were doing, the warm colour of Titian and the full, calm figures of Palma Vecchio, who also came from Bergamo, and mixed it with something plainer and more direct that he kept from home. His portraits especially have a blunt, watchful honesty that sets them apart from the polished Venetian ideal.

Cariani never quite settled. He worked in Venice, went back to Bergamo around 1517, returned, left again near 1528, and shuttled between the city and his native province for much of his career, painting altarpieces for Bergamo churches and portraits of its merchant families. He was active in Venice until his death in 1547. Because he worked in that in-between style, some of his pictures were long given to bigger names like Giorgione and Titian before being returned to him.