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Denti, Girolamo
(b ?Venice, c. 1510; d ?Venice c. 1572). Italian painter. He was in Titian’s workshop, probably from about 1520, and became his most prominent assistant, signing himself di Tiziano. His fame is based mainly on two paintings traditionally ascribed to him: the Four Seasons (Paris, priv. col.) and the Holy Family with Donors (Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister), both executed between 1540 and 1550. In the early 1530s he painted a Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints for Cesena Cathedral, and about ten years later he sent another altarpiece of that subject (Monópoli, Vescovado) to Apulia. A portrait of the Two Pesaro Brothers (1540s; United Kingdom, priv. col., see 1983 exh. cat., no. 120), once assigned to Titian, belongs to the same period, as does SS Andrew, Sebastian and Roch (Mel, nr Belluno, Parrocchiale) and SS Mark, Leonard and Francis (Ancona, Pin. Com.). In 1557 Denti received the commission for the official portrait of Doge Lorenzo Priuli (sold London, Sotheby’s, 28 April 1971) and for the huge Annunciation (1557–61; Venice, Accad., on dep. Mason Vicentino) in the Scuola della Carità in Venice, the companion piece to Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin (Venice, Accad.). The Annunciation is a theatrical work, recalling perhaps his documented activity as a scene painter, and reveals various influences, from Andrea Palladio to Raphael and Lorenzo Lotto. Denti’s sensitivity to the works of Paris Bordone is seen in the Virgin and Child with Saints (1559; Venice, Accad.), once in Belluno. Between 1560 and 1570 Denti reached the height of his career, narrowly missing a commission from Philip II, King of Spain, to paint a copy of Titian’s Martyrdom of St Lawrence (Madrid, Escorial). He is last mentioned in 1566, when he may have been the main executant, with Marco Vecellio and Emanuele d’Augusta, of the frescoes (destr.) after Titian’s cartoons in the arch-diaconal church of Pieve di Cadore.
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