BASSANO, GIACOMO DA PONTE, a celebrated Venetian painter, born in 1510. His subjects were generally peasants and villagers, cattle, landscapes, with some portraits and historical designs. His figures are well designed, and his animals and landscapes have an agreeable air of simple nature. His compositions, though devoid of much elegance or grandeur, have abundance of force and truth; the local colours are well observed, the carnations are fresh and brilliant, and his chiaroscuro and perspective are unexceptionable. He finished a great number of pictures; but notwithstanding his application, his genuine works are rare; many of those which are called originals being either copies by the sons of Bassano, or others. His true pictures, when undamaged, always bear a considerable price. He died in 1592, aged eighty-two. Francesco and Leandro, his sons, made some progress in the same art; but inheriting a species of lunacy from their mother, both came to an untimely end.