Paris Bordone

Venice told a story about a terrible storm on the night of 15 February 1340, when a poor fisherman ferried three saints across the lagoon to drive off the demons raising the tempest, and was handed a ring by Saint Mark himself to prove it to the Doge. In 1534 the confraternity of Saint Mark held a competition to paint that scene, and a young Venetian named Paris Bordone won it.

He had trained briefly in the workshop of Titian, the towering master of Venetian painting, an apprenticeship the biographer Vasari calls short and unhappy. His picture shows that teaching and shakes it off at once: warm, heavy Titianesque figures set inside a deep hall of marble steps and arches borrowed from the architect Serlio, the fisherman climbing toward the enthroned Doge with the ring held out.

That painting, now in the Accademia gallery in Venice, made his name. Bordone became sought after as a portraitist and worked for patrons well beyond the lagoon, travelling in 1538 to the French court of King Francis I. He spent most of his long life back in Venice, painting mythologies and richly dressed sitters in bright colour, and by his death in 1571 that early prize picture was still his best-known work.