Paolo Farinati
1524–1606 · Republic of Venice · Mannerism, Veronese school
The story
From 1573 until the year he died, Paolo Farinati kept a ledger. His Giornale, which survives with some pages missing, records the commissions, payments and daily business of a busy family workshop in Verona, and it shows him working well beyond the easel. It notes a carved crucifix in 1582, around ten etchings, and in 1586 work as an architect on the church at Padenghe, on Lake Garda.
He was born in Verona in 1524, the son of a painter. In 1552 Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga ordered new altarpieces for the cathedral of Mantua from young painters of Verona, and Farinati's Saint Martin was painted alongside work by Paolo Veronese and Domenico Brusasorci. Veronese soon left for Venice. Farinati stayed at home, his sons Orazio and Giambattista joined the shop, and he was still settling his affairs in July 1606, when he added a codicil to his will. He died soon after.
Many of his pictures carry no signature at all, only a small snail painted in a corner, a mark he used from his earliest works.
