(b Pordenone, ?c.1483; d Ferrara, ?13 Jan. 1539). Italian painter, named after the town of his birth, near Venice, and active in various parts of northern Italy. After working in a provincial style at the very start of his career (his master is unknown and Vasari says he was self-taught), by the beginning of the second decade of the 16th century he had come close to the contemporary Venetian (specifically Giorgionesque) manner of painting. In the second half of the decade, however, he was in central Italy, and his style changed under the impact particularly of Michelangelo, acquiring great weight and solidity. Pordenone was influenced also by the illusionism of Mantegna and by German prints, and the style he forged from these diverse influences was highly distinctive and original.