St Anthony Abbot and St Paul

Savoldo was a Lombard painter who settled in Venice in about 1520. He visited Florence and the monumentality of his painted figures manifests the influence of Michelangelo’s works in Florence. His style can be differentiated from the Venetian style in spite of the seemingly similar compositions. He influenced the late style of Titian and Jacopo Bassano and he played an important role in the formation of Caravaggio’s art.

A good example of his style is St Anthony Abbot and St Paul, in which the light shines from the right and glances off the figures, utterly human in their lifelike concreteness and completely alien to the canons of ideal beauty and perfect harmony obtained in the early sixteenth century.