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Shown from the chest up behind a stone ledge, a light-skinned man with a mustache, beard, and shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a black garment with voluminous sleeves, tilts his head back to look at us from the corners of his eyes in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left but he tips his head back to look past his rounded nose at us with dark eyes from under arched brows. His right fist, on our left, rests on a closed book bound in moss green, which is fastened with a metal clasp. The book rests on the ivory-white stone ledge, which steps up to a higher level to our right. He clenches a wad of nickel-gray cloth in the hand on the book, and his other arm rests by his side, extending out of view behind the ledge. His black, long-sleeved jacket has full sleeves and is open at the neck over a collarless white shirt. A squared opening is cut into the elephant-gray stone wall behind him to our left. A cityscape beneath a pale blue sky is visible in the distance out the window. The Roman characters “VVO” appear to be carved into the front face of the ledge, at the bottom edge of the canvas.

Cariani

Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman, c. 1510/1515

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 10

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 76.2 x 63.5 cm (30 x 25 in.)

framed: 108 x 93.7 x 8.6 cm (42 1/2 x 36 7/8 x 3 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.258

Artists / Makers

Cariani (painter) Venetian, 1485/1490 - 1547 or after

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower center on parapet: VVO

Provenance

Robert P. Nichols, London. William Graham [1817-1885], London; (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 2-3 and 8-10 April 1886, 5th day, no. 450, as Portrait of a Lawyer); (Colnaghi's, London and New York). Henry Doetsch [1839-1894], London; (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 22 and 24-25 June 1895, no. 48, as by Licinio); Radel.[1] George Kemp, 1st baron Rochdale [d. 1945], Beechwood Hall, Rochdale, Lancashire, by 1897 until at least 1905; purchased 1917 or 1918 by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris).[2] Henry Goldman [1857-1937], New York, 1920 until at least 1926.[3] (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] The buyer's name was kindly provided by Lynda McLeod, Librarian, Christie's Archives, London (see her e-mail of 28 March 2013 in NGA curatorial files); no identifying information has yet been found.

[2] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Los Angeles: reel 100, box 245, folder 12; copies in NGA curatorial files.

[3] According to Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America, New York, 1941: no. 153.

[4] According to Kress records in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1709.

Associated Names

Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Doetsch, Henry
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Goldman, Henry
Graham, William
Kemp, 1st baron Rochdale, George
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Nichols, Robert P.
Radel

Exhibition History

1905: Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1905.

1920: Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1920, unnumbered catalogue.

1924: Loan Exhibition of Important Early Italian Paintings in the Possession of Notable American Collectors, Duveen Brothers, New York, 1924, no. 44, as by Titian (no. 47, as Portrait of a Merchant in illustrated 1926 version of catalogue).

1993: Le Siècle de Titien: L'âge d'or de la peinture à Venise, Galeries du Grand Palais, Paris, 1993, no. 41, fig. 5, 375-379, repro. 56, as Portrait d'homme by Titian.

2006: Tiziano e il Ritratto di Corte da Raffaello ai Carracci, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples, 2006, no. 2, repro.

2009: Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2009, as Venetian 16th Century, not in catalogue.

2016: In the Age of Giorgione, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2016, no. 13, repro.

Bibliography

1935: Tietze, Hans. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935: 85, repro. (English ed., Masterpieces of European Painting in America. New York, 1939: 85, repro.).

1941: Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 153, repro., as by Titian.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 79-80, 198, no. 369.

1941: Richter, George Martin. "The New National Gallery in Washington." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (June 1941): 178, as "probably begun by Giorgione and then finished by another hand, either Titian or Sebastiano del Piombo."

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 114.

1944: Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 47, repro.

1945: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 100, repro.

1951: Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 88-89, repro.

1952: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Great Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1952: 58, color repro.

1956: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1956: 26, repro.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 157, repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 307, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 58.

1966: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:162, color repro.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 50, repro.

1968: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 178-179, fig. 426.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 154, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:213-216; 2:pl. 146, as Attributed to Giorgione and Titian.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 199, no. 238, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 176, repro.

1990: Tiziano [NGA title: Titian: Prince of Painters] Exh. cat. Palazzo Ducale, Venice; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1990-1991: 73-74, repro.

1993: Freedberg, S. J. "The Attribution of the Allendale Nativity." Studies in the History of Art 45 (1993): 69, repro. no. 31.

1993: Steinberg, Arthur. "Blurred Boundaries, Opulent Nature, and Sensuous Flesh: Changing Technological Styles in Venetian Painting, 1480-1520." Studies in the History of Art 45 (1993): 215.

1997: Anderson, Jaynie. Giorgione: The Painter of "Poetic Brevity". New York, 1997: 345, repro., as by Cariani.

2007: Gustave Courbet Exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée Fabre, Montpellier, 2007:under no. 1