Leandro da Ponte, called Leandro Bassano

Sixth of the eight sons of Jacopo Bassano, Leandro was one of the four who followed in his father’s footsteps and, along with his brother Francesco (1549 – 1592), established himself as one of the leading painters in Venice at the end of 16th century. His early training was obviously in the workshop of his father Jacopo, but from the beginning of the 1580s, he started to receive independent commissions for paintings such as the Deposition of Christ in the Museo Civico, Bassano or the Last Supper in the collections of Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

In 1588, he moved to Venice where he lived until his death in 1622. As pointed out by Rodolfo Pallucchini in his pioneering research on Venetian painting in the 17th century (La pittura Veneziana del Seicento, Venice 1981, pp. 28-29) Leandro was most accomplished in the field of portraiture wherein he succeeded formulating a new method of depiction, using as a basis the models of Titian and Tintoretto and combining them with a greater realism in part derived from the influence and work of Bartolomeo Passerotti.