PALMA, GIACOPO, surnamed "the Young," was the grand-nephew of the preceding, and was born at Venice in 1544. Many favourable circumstances combined to assist him in his progress towards eminence. After receiving his first lessons from his father, a painter of some repute, he exercised his hand in copying from Titian and the best of the native masters. Then being sent to Rome at the expense of the Duke of Urbino, he spent eight years in copying from the antique, and in studying Michael Angelo, Raphael, and especially Pollidoro. On his return to Venice, when Tintoretto and Paul Veronese were monopolizing all the employment in that city, Vittoria, an eminent sculptor and architect, patronized him, gave him advice, and brought him into notice. By these means did Palma attain to such a reputation that, on the death of his two great rivals, he began to be overwhelmed with commissions, and his pictures came to be appreciated for their rich and animated composition, and their fresh and transparent colouring. Yet it was this very rise in popular estimation that led to his decline in art. The hurry resulting from his numerous and pressing engagements betrayed him into negligence. Unless when he was allowed to take his own time, and name his own remuneration for any particular painting, he was wont to dash off pictures which were little else than rough draughts. This evil influence did not stop with his death, in 1628. It affected the rising artists of the same school, and introduced the most corrupt period of Venetian art. One of Palma's most celebrated pictures is his "Plague
Palmas of the Serpents" in St Bartolomeo. (Lanzi's History of Painting.)
Palmyra. PALMAS, LAS. See CANARY ISLANDS.