Andrea Renier and His Son Daniele, c. 1560/1566

The first name of the primary sitter, Andreas Renerius or Andrea Renier, and the entire reference to his son Daniel or Daniele, is on the strip of canvas added to the left (probably during the 17th century) to replace a portion of the painting that had apparently been severely damaged. Nevertheless, the specificity of the information suggests that it repeats an inscription that was there originally, or at least has some factual basis. Indeed, the primary sitter can be securely identified.

The Reniers were a patrician Venetian family with many prominent members in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Andrea di Giacomo di Andrea Renier was born in 1514 and died in 1560. His son Daniele was born in 1535 and died in 1566. Andrea Renier held numerous positions in the Venetian government over the course of his career, most prominently as a member of the Minor Consiglio (or Consiglio dei Sei) from 1552 to 1553, 1555 to 1556, and 1558 to 1559. In this position, he would have been one of the six consiglieri to the doge who made up the group. The doge could open letters and hold audiences only in the presence of four of the six consiglieri. They were elected for eight-month terms and could be reelected only twice, after which they had to leave the office before they could be elected to it again. In 1559, the year before his death, Andrea was appointed to the important post of podesta (Venetian governor) of Brescia. He had previously held the same office in another of Venice’s other subject cities on the terraferma, Treviso, and served as Venetian capitano at Verona.[1]  [1]
For a description of the Venetian system of government, with its various councils, see David Chambers, The Imperial Age of Venice, 1380–1580 (London, 1970), 73–107; and Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (Brunswick, NJ, 1980), 37–43. Paola Benussi of the Archivio di Stato, Venice, has located documentation of Andrea Renier’s appointment as consigliere and podesta of Brescia, along with many other positions, beginning in 1532, in the Segretario alle Voci election registers in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (email correspondence with author, April 2011, copies in NGA curatorial files). His appointment as podesta of Brescia in 1559 is also documented in Amelio Tagliaferri, ed., Podestaria e capitanato di Brescia, Vol. 11: Relazioni dei rettori veneti in terraferma (Milan, 1978), LII (information provided by Stephen Bowd). His appointment as podesta of Treviso in 1543 is at Biblioteca del Museo Correr, MS Classe III, 154 (information provided by Helena Szépe). His life dates and his appointment as podesta of Brescia, as well as the life dates of his son Daniele, are reported in Marco Barbaro, with additions by A. M. Tasca (1743), Arbori de’ patritii veneti, Archivio di Stato, Venice, Miscellanea codici, serie I, reg. 22: vol. 6, 417 (information provided by Linda Borean). The 18th-century genealogist Girolamo Alessandro Cappellari-Vivaro, in Famiglie venete (Campidoglio Veneto), Archivio di Stato, Venice, Miscellanea codici, serie III, reg. 34, c. 40v, adds that Andrea was senator and consigliere (information provided by Paola Benussi of the Archivio di Stato, Venice).

That this Andrea Renier is the subject of the Gallery’s painting is confirmed by the landscape, which represents Brescia, where he served in his last official position. The town is seen from the east or southeast, with the Ronchi hills in the background. Looming above it is the Castello, with its large towers at either end and the tall, round Mirabella tower at the center. Ascending diagonally up the hillside is the inner range of walls built by the Viscontis in the 14th century. Below the castle are the two towers of the broletto, the seat of government, and the old Duomo (cathedral), which collapsed in 1708. The other towers are generally consonant with Brescian topography at the time, although not every one can be identified with precision. The gate in the foreground is probably the Porta Torrelunga (now Porta Venezia).[2]  [2]
On Brescia in the 16th century, see Stephen D. Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaissance Brescia (Cambridge, MA, 2010). Stephen Bowd confirmed that the landscape depicts Brescia and identified its topographical features.

The identity of the boy in the painting is more problematic, since in the inscription he seems to be referred to as Andrea Renier’s son Daniele. This boy appears to be roughly ten to twelve years old, whereas Andrea did not assume his office at Brescia until 1559, when Daniele was well into his twenties. Moreover, the picture seems more likely to date from around 1560 (the year of Andrea’s death) rather than around 1545/1547, when Daniele would have been a boy. The careful, labored technique and the overall flatness of the result suggest that the painting was executed by a studio assistant or imitator. The format, with the view out the window to a landscape, is generally similar to one employed by Tintoretto (for example, Portrait of a Man with a Landscape View). However, Tintoretto first used this format in the Portrait of a Gentleman Aged Twenty-Eight (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart), dated 1548; by 1560, the type was well established and much more likely to have been imitated as a matter of routine.[3]  [3]
For the Stuttgart portrait, see Paola Rossi, Jacopo Tintoretto: I ritratti (Venice, 1974), cat. no. 65; Miguel Falomir, ed., Tintoretto (Madrid, 2007), 226–228, cat. no. 10. 

The unusual profile view of the primary subject suggests that the portrait may have been posthumous, possibly commissioned by the adult Daniele Renier after his father’s death and before his own death in 1566. Although rare in easel paintings, profile portraits of officials often appeared on the frontispieces of official documents such as ducal commissioni.[4]  [4]
For examples of profile portraits in commissioni, see Wolfgang Wolters, Der Bilderschmuck des Dogenpalastes: Untersuchungen zur Selbstdarstellung der Republik Venedig im 16. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1983), 148–149; Italian ed., Storia e politica nei dipinti di Palazzo Ducale: Aspetti dell’autocelebrazione della Repubblica di Venezia nel Cinquecento, trans. Benedetta Heinemann Campana (Venice, 1987), 146–147, figs. 138, 139, and 141. The three-quarter-view portrait visible in the x-radiograph of the present painting may have been deemed unsatisfactory and been abandoned, or may possibly be unrelated to the final painting, despite its apparent similarity. The Gallery’s portrait may have been based on the image of Andrea Renier in such a document. According to Helena Szépe, who has studied portraiture on ducal commissioni, these documents occasionally portray the recipient of the post with a young boy. In some such cases, it is possible to identify the boy as the recipient’s son; in other cases, surviving records show no son of a corresponding age at the time of the recipient’s commission.[5]  [5]
Email communication to author, September 2010. See also Helena Katalin Szépe, Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts (New Haven and London, 2018), 208–210. Thus, it is conceivable that the painting is based on a commissione depicting Andrea Renier with a page or some other anonymous youth, and that the phrase Daniel.filius was added at the time of the repair and repainting of the left side. The painting has never been included in the Tintoretto literature. Fern Rusk Shapley assigned it to a Tintoretto follower, the most appropriate attribution.[6]  [6]
The only attributions to Tintoretto are on the backs of photographs in NGA curatorial files. August Mayer in 1922 stated that the picture was by Tintoretto. Gabriel von Térey’s undated opinion also attributes the painting to Tintoretto and identifies the sitter as “Andreas Renieri, Governor of Bergamo,” presumably on the assumption that the landscape represents Bergamo. Both photographs show the painting before removal of the overpaint covering the boy. Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:475.

Robert Echols

March 21, 2019