Marco Antonio Bassetti

On 16 May 1616 a young painter from Verona wrote from Rome to Palma il Giovane, the senior master of Venetian painting, that he did not feel at ease in the city and preferred the Venetian way of working. Marcantonio Bassetti was one of three Veronese painters in Rome in those years, with Alessandro Turchi and Pasquale Ottino, when Caravaggio's followers set the tone.

The Dead Christ at the Galleria Borghese, recorded in the collection since 1693, shows both pulls. Bassetti had spent years in Venice copying Tintoretto, and the gestures come from him, while the strong fall of light belongs to Rome. The Madonna's face half in shadow recalls Girolamo Savoldo, a Brescian master of the early 1500s. Bassetti went back to Verona around 1620 and died there of plague in 1630. His reputation was largely rebuilt in the 20th century by the critic Roberto Longhi.