or PORTENAI, a town of Austrian Italy, in the government of Venice, stands on the Noncello, 40 miles N.N.E. of Venice. It is well built, and surrounded with an old wall; and it contains several churches, a convent, hospital, workhouse, and theatre. Manufactures, especially that of paper, are actively carried on here; and there is some trade in corn and wine. As early as the twelfth century, Pordenone belonged to Austria, but afterwards passed, with the rest of the province of Friuli, under the dominion of Venice. Pop. 6300.

the surname which Giovanni Antonio Licinio Regillo, an able Italian painter, received from his birth-place, Pordenone, a small town in Friuli. He was born in 1483, and acquired a knowledge of art by studying the works of Pellegino and Giorgione. In spite, however, of this inadequate training, a strong and vigorous intellect soon made him a bold and effective artist. He adorned many villas and castles in his native district, designing with an active and ingenious fancy, and executing with a skilful and rapid hand. He painted many altar-pieces at Udine, Piacenza, and other cities, cleverly resolving all the difficulties of his art, and employing the most novel foreshortening, the most laboured perspective, and a power of relief which made his pictures appear as if actually starting from the canvas. There was no artistic feat indeed, which could daunt his towering ambition. Happening to take up his abode in Venice, he was smitten with a desire to rival the great Titian. This desire in course of time became inflamed into a mania, and actuated his entire conduct. He toiled night and day at his easel. He tried every conciliating art to secure the suffrages of the great and the influential. He placed his works on every possible occasion in juxtaposition to those of his rival. He even carried about weapons, in order that he might be ready, if every other method should fail, to decide the contest by physical force. Nor were these aspirations of Pordenone altogether without success. Some people really placed him above Titian; Charles V. presented him with the title of cavalier; and Duke Ercole invited him to the court of Ferrara. Other honours were in store for him, when he was suddenly cut off in 1539, not without suspicion of having been poisoned.

The best known paintings of Pordenone are the pictures of "St Christopher," in one of the churches of his native town; "The Marriage of St Catherine," in the church of Santa Maria della Campagna at Piacenza; and the picture of "San Lorenzo Giustiniani," in the church of Santa Maria dell'Orto at Venice.