(b Treviso, c. 1498; d Boulogne-sur-Mer, 1544). Italian painter, draughtsman, sculptor and military engineer. He is first documented in 1523 in Bologna but had probably arrived there c. 1520. Between 1515 and 1520 he produced an engraving (initialled) of Susanna and the Elders and a series of drawings that were engraved by Francesco de Nanto, depicting scenes from the Life of Christ. A series of paintings, some of them initialled, were attributed to him by Coletti and this attribution is now generally accepted. The group includes two small canvases (transferred from panels that were initialled HIRTV) representing Isaac Blessing Jacob and Hagar and the Angel (both Rouen, Mus. B.-A.), the monogrammed Sleeping Venus (c. 1520–29; Rome, Gal. Borghese; see fig.), which contains an echo of Marcantonio Raimondi’s so-called Dream of Raphael (B. 274, 359), the initialled Female Nude (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), derived from a drawing by Raphael (London, BM) that was engraved by Raimondi (B. 234, 311), the Holy Family with Simeon (Ca’ Morosini, parish church), the Noli me tangere (Bologna, S Giovanni in Monte) and the Christ in Limbo (Munich, Alte Pin.). These would be early works but they already show that Girolamo’s Venetian style was modified by his response to the classicizing art of Emilia, and particularly by the work of Giacomo Francia and Marcantonio Raimondi, who united the classicism of Raphael with the fantasies of northern European engravers.

• Girolamo (di Tommaso) da Treviso (ii)
  • attributions
    • Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo, §2: Style, working methods and posthumous reputation
  • collaboration
    • Bologna, §IV, 2: S Petronio
    • Cioli: (1) Simone Cioli
  • patrons and collectors
    • Castiglione, Sabba da
    • Tudor: (2) Henry VIII, King of England
  • reproductive prints by others
    • Carracci, §II: (2) Agostino Carracci
    • Nanto, Francesco de
  • works
    • Odoni, Andrea
    • Silk, §2(i): Western world, before the mid-17th century