The first renaissance centurion: the National Gallery of Scotland's new exhibition of Venetian renaissance art in Scottish collections includes a major rediscovery, a painting by Paris Bordon from Mount Stuart, Alexandra Jackson discusses its place in Venetian art, and studies the limited evidence for its date, patronage and provenance

Apollo, August, 2004 by Alexandra Jackson

(14) It seems likely that the colourful figure on the left of the Fisherman is the source of Veronese's turbaned man in the same position.

(15) For Bonifacio, see Philip Cottrell, Bonifacio's Enterprise., Bonifacio Veronese and Venetian Painting, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, December 2000, pp. 226-27. I am grateful to the author for bringing this picture to my attention.

(16) Cocke. op. cit., p. 58.

(17) Fehl, op cit. p. 221.

(18) Ivano Sartor, 'Correzioni sul Paris Bordon di Biancade' in Giorgio Fossaluzza (ed.), Treviso: Ca' Spineda, vol. XXV, no. 3, December 1984, Treviso, pp. 28-33.

(19) First cited in Bailo and Biscaro, op. cit., p. 47.

(20) Giordana Mariani Canova, 'Paris Bordon: Problematiche cronologiche' in Fossaluzza and Manzato, op. cit. p. 148.

(21) Cited in Bailo and Biscaro, op. cit., p. 47.

(22) Canova, op. cit., pp 40, 42.

(23) Canova, in Fossaluzza and Manzato, op. cit., p. 148.

(24) Giorgio Fossaluzza, 'Codice diplomatico bordoniano' in Manzato, op. cit. in n. 3 above (1987), p. 115. For the transcribed document, see idem, op. cit. in n. 3 above (1984), pp. 133-34. no. 37: Archivio di Stato Milano, Archivio Notarile. Filza 11359, Notaio Giovan Paolo Canali.

(25) Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piu Eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architettori, Venice, 1568, G. Milanesi (ed.). 1881, vol. VII, pp. 461-66.

(26) Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'arte, Venice, 1648, p. 212. The other paintings to which he alludes are Bathsheba at her bath with servants, believed to be the painting in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, and Mars and Venus captured in a net by Vulcan, (oil on canvas. 168 x 198 cm, signed, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz).

(27) Attributed to Niccolo dell'Abbate, Portrait mythologique de Francois ler, c. mid-1540s. Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Estampes et photographie, no. Na-255-4.

(28) It is interesting to note that the Armeria Reale di Torino lists an analogous shoulder guard or spallaccio as representative of those used by the Dukes of Savoy in the sixteenth to the seventeenth century (Armeria Reale, Torino, c 148). Vasari cites a late commission by the Duchess of Savoy, whereas Ridolfi gives the patron as the Duke of Savoy.

(29) Sylvie Beguin, 'Pads Bordon en France', in Fossaluzza and Manzato, op. cit. 13-24.

(30) Two further examples are the drawing of Pope Sylvester with the allegory of Fortitude for the Sala di Constantino in the Vatican (Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth) and two frescoes, Thetis gives Achilles his arms and The Trojan horse, designed between 1536 and 1540 and executed by his assistants on the ceiling of the Sala di Troia in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua.

(31) Museum of Art and Architecture, University of Missouri, no. 61.78; Samuel Kress Study Collection, no. K 1112.

(32) Klara Garas, 'Opere di Paris Bordon di Augusta' in Fossaluzza and Manzato, op. cit., p. 74. Garas points out that the inventory, which was in the imperial archives in Vienna over a century ago, is now lost.

(33) Vasari, op. cit., p. 464. See J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle Life and Times of Titian, vol. II, London, 1881, chapter 2, p. 170, for a possible identification of the Prineri as the 'famiglia Peronnaeorum' in Sandrart, and as 'Pirrovano', whose portrait by Titian is mentioned in a letter from G.B. Cattani dated 30 August 1548 to the artist in Augsburg. Garas (op. cit., p. 73) has suggested the word was Vasari's own typographical error in place of 'primieri', i.e. a prominent family. She has traced the seventeenth-century provenance of the picture associated with the Prineri to Count Pal Pallfy, son of Maria Fugger.