Aliense, a compatriot and just a little younger than El Greco,[7] was one of the painters commissioned to decorate the restored Palace.

Vassilacchi became a member of 'The Brotherhood of Saint Nicolas of the Greek Nation' (Scuola dei Greci), one of the liveliest 'foreign' communities in Venice, in 1600.

Carlo Ridolfi, his biographer and student,[9] describes a painting by the artist in which he portrays himself carrying his wife, her nurse, her uncle and her son by her previous marriage, on his back.

San Vitale is the church on the same square as Vassilacchi's house and he had painted there, a few years earlier (and both aptly named), a Resurrection' and an Ascension.

Sire Antonio Aliense, painter, aged about 73 years, sick of fever and catarrh these twelve days past.

In 1591 Vassilacchi was engaged by the Brotherhood of Merchants (Scuola dei Mercanti), and some time later he was working in the church of San Giovanni Elemosinario, just a few metres from the commercial centre of Venice, the Rialto.

Naturally modest and polite, Aliense had a good word to say about all the sketches, which complicated rather than simplified matters.

His sketch was immediately accepted and from it was created the large bronze group of the Four Evangelists Supporting the World and God.