Quick Facts
Biography
Vincenzo Catena (c. 1480–1531) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance Venetian school. He is also known as Vincenzo de Biagio.
Life
Nothing is known of the date and place of Catena's birth. The earliest known record of him is in an inscription on the back of Giorgione's Laura, in which he is described as the painter's Cholego. Catena's early style is however, much closer to that of Giovanni Bellini than the innovative work of Giorgione, and it was not until a few years after Giorgione's death in 1510 that his influence began to show itself in Catena's output. There are about a dozen signed paintings by Catena in existence, although only one of these, the Martyrdom of St Christina (1520) in the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini in Venice, can be dated with any certainty, from an inscription on its marble surround.
Catena's wills indicate that he was a man of some wealth, and that he had friends in Venetian humanist circles.