(Giacomo de Pont), or LE BASSAN, a celebrated Venetian painter, was born in 1510. His subjects generally were peasants and villagers, busy at their different rural occupations, according to the various seasons of the year; cattle, landscapes, and historical designs; and in all these subjects the figures were well designed, and the animals and landscapes have an agreeable resemblance of simple nature. His compositions cannot boast of much elegance or grandeur of taste, not even those which are historical; but they have abundance of force and truth. His local colours are very well observed, his carnations are fresh and brilliant, and the chiaro-oscuro and perspective well understood. His touch is free and spirited; and the distances in his landscapes are always true, if not sometimes too dark in the nearer parts. His works are spread all over Europe; many of them were purchased by Titian; and there are several in the French king's cabinet, the royal palace, and the Hotel de Toulouse. They are more readily known than those of most other painters; from the similitude of characters and countenances in the figures and animals; from the taste in the buildings, utensils, and draperies; and, beside, from a violet or purple tint that predominates in every one of his pictures. But the genuine pictures of his hand are not so easily ascertained; because he frequently repeated the same design, and his sons were mostly employed in copying the works of their father, which he sometimes retouched. As he lived to be very old, he finished a great number of pictures; yet notwithstanding his application and years, the real pictures of Giacomo are not commonly met with. Many of those which are called originals by purchasers as well as dealers, being at best no more than copies by the sons of Bassan, who were far inferior to him; or perhaps by some painter of still meaner abilities. But the true pictures of Giacomo always bear a considerable price if they happen to be undamaged. He died in 1592, aged 82.—Francis and Leander, his sons, distinguished themselves in the same art; but inheriting a species of lunacy from their mother, both came to an untimely end.