The J. Paul Getty Museum

Born and trained in Amsterdam, Lambert Sustris spent most of his life in Italy. In the early 1530s he was in Rome, shifting to Venice around 1535. There he probably worked in Titian's workshop, where he may have specialized in landscapes. After contact with followers of Francesco Salviati around 1540, Sustris incorporated Salviati's sophisticated, linear Florentine Mannerism into his own colorful, Venetian-influenced style. From 1542 to 1543, he painted frescoes in villas in and near Padua, creating an innovative series of elegant classical scenes.

In 1548 Sustris was in Bavaria, probably with Titian, who was then official painter at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. There Sustris painted portraits that combined Titian's looseness with his own Northern European attention to details of fabric and jewelry. After this period in Germany, Sustris's activity is unclear, though he probably worked in Venice and Padua. His son, painter and draftsman Friedrich Sustris, settled in Florence and became a member of Giorgio Vasari's academy.