Robert Bresson develops a filmmaking style that is noticeably different from other directors of his time. I argue in this chapter that such a singular approach is possible because Bresson draws, in a number of highly original ways, on the conventions, style, and iconography of painting. Such tendencies are hardly surprising, since Bresson trained as a painter in his youth, and claims in numerous interviews throughout his career that he never actually left painting, but rather transported a distinctive set of painterly concerns to the cinema, evident from the wide range of painters discussed in Notes surle cinématographe (1975). It is relatively common to encounter comparisons between Bresson and painting, and a handful of articles even tease out parallels between a particular Bresson film and an individual painter's style, including work by Giotto, Uccello, Vermeer, Courbet, and Cézanne. In her foundational study on the relationship between painting and cinema, Angela Dalle Vacche acknowledges Bresson's unique contributions to the interchange between painting and cinema, but observes that almost no analysis has been done on the topic. Dalle Vacche is quite right: beyond a few preliminary nods, little has been done to explore such connections in a rigorous or detailed way. Studies on the relationship between painting and cinema tend to focus on a small group of filmmakers, led by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, or Peter Greenaway.