Antonio Vassilacchi

Antonio Vassilacchi, known as Aliense, was a painter of Greek descent born on the island of Milos in 1556 and who died in Venice in 1629. He worked almost entirely in the Venetian Republic and the Veneto, where he was one of the most active painters of his time in public and religious commissions.

He moved to Venice as a young man and became a pupil of Paolo Veronese, with whom he worked on frescoes at the episcopal palace in Treviso, at Sant'Agata in Padua and in several Venetian churches. After the fire that nearly destroyed the Doge's Palace in December 1577, he took part in decorating its restored halls, where he painted so much that his work there likely outnumbers that of any other single artist.

His nickname Aliense, from the Latin alienus meaning stranger, referred to his non-Italian origin. He joined the Venetian painters' brotherhood in 1584 and the Scuola dei Greci in 1600. Among his major works are the large Resurrection at San Marziale and the cycle of the Life of Christ for San Pietro in Perugia, with its monumental Apotheosis of the Benedictine Order.

His legacy is largely documentary: his pupil Carlo Ridolfi recorded his life in his biographies of Venetian painters, and his output helps illuminate Venetian painting of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.