Portrait of a Man with a Landscape View, 1552/1556

Although Jacopo Tintoretto, early in his career, often seemed to define himself in opposition to Titian, in his portraiture he was more conservative, and followed Titian’s models closely.[1]  [1]
See Frederick Ilchman, “The Titian Formula,” in Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (Boston, 2009), 206. The Gallery’s painting belongs to a group of portraits by Tintoretto and his studio that adhere to a similar compositional formula derived primarily from Titian: a three-quarter-length, standing figure, with the body turned facing the viewer, with drapery and architectural forms in the background, often before a window with a distant view. These include the earliest dated example, the Gentleman Aged Twenty-Eight (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart), inscribed with a date of 1548, in which the pose is virtually identical; and the Portrait of a Gentleman (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon), undated [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Jacopo Tintoretto, Portrait of a Gentleman, undated, oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon. © Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie – Photo Charles Choffet. The sitter in the Gallery’s portrait holds gloves, as in the Besançon painting.[2]  [2]
Paola Rossi, Jacopo Tintoretto: I ritratti (Venice, 1974), cat. nos. 17, 65. On the Stuttgart painting, see also Miguel Falomir, ed., Tintoretto (Madrid, 2007), 226–228, cat. no. 10. On the Besançon painting, see also Le Tintoret: Une leçon de peinture (Milan, 1998), 118, 119, repro. The pose of the sitter in the NGA painting is also extremely close to a supposed portrait of Jacopo Sansovino by Tintoretto, probably a studio work (Uffizi, Florence); Rossi, Jacopo Tintoretto, cat. no. 1; see also Titien, Tintoret, Véronèse: Rivalités à Venise (Paris, 2009), fig. 98. (Despite its inscription, this painting is unlikely to represent Sansovino, who was born in 1486, and would have been 60 in 1546, the earliest likely date for the painting. This painting clearly shows a much younger man and the features of the subject do not resemble those of Sansovino as depicted by Tintoretto late in life. The inscription was probably added at some later date, reflecting the presence of architecture and sculpture in the portrait.) His fur-trimmed robe is almost identical to the one worn by the subject in the portrait of Lorenzo Soranzo (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), dated 1553, which is also extremely similar in pose, although the background there is much simpler.[3]  [3]
Paola Rossi, Jacopo Tintoretto: I ritratti (Venice, 1974), cat. no. 139; see also Miguel Falomir, in Tintoretto, ed., Miguel Falomir (Madrid, 2007), 266–269, cat. no. 25. X-radiography reveals that the Soranzo portrait was originally a portrait of a different sitter, inscribed MDLII/ANLXXV (1552/age 75 years). The face, but not the body and costume, was changed to represent Soranzo, the inscription altered to read MDLIII/AN.XXXV (1553/age 35 years), and the monogram of Soranzo, LS, added. The fact that Tintoretto could paint the young Lorenzo Soranzo in the same costume he had used for an elderly man raises the possibility that the almost identical costume in the Gallery painting is not particular to this sitter but was either painted from a studio prop or adapted from a sketch used in the Soranzo portrait (or even from the Soranzo portrait itself, possibly still in the studio).

If, in contrast to these other portraits, the Gallery’s painting seems rather flat, the face lacking a sense of underlying facial structure and the brushwork lifeless, a possible explanation may be that Tintoretto’s distinctive hand has been obscured by the painting’s condition over the centuries. X-radiography [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] X-radiograph, Jacopo Tintoretto, with landscape by Marten de Vos, Portrait of a Man with a Landscape View, 1552/1556, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Chester Dale Collection reveals strong, free brushwork that creates a sense of the skull beneath the skin, typical of Tintoretto (and very similar to that revealed in the x-radiograph of his A Procurator of Saint Mark’s). The loss of shadows and glazes, coupled with overpainting in the forehead, cheeks, nose, and mustache, could have disguised spontaneity in the brushwork and flattened out contours that would have been more strongly conveyed in light and shadow. The darkened varnish obscures the folds of the cloak and the definition of forms, and it hides the manner in which the weave of the canvas catches the paint unevenly, a technique that Tintoretto often exploited to create effects of light and texture. If one imagines the painting with a blush of red glaze on the cheeks, a reflection of light on the forehead, and shadows under the eye and on the cheeks to define the forms, a potentially autograph portrait by Tintoretto begins to emerge. The painting has been accepted as such by most major scholars.[4]  [4]
The only apparent dissent in the literature comes from Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School (London, 1957), 1:183. However, his assistant Nicky Mariano reported in a letter to NGA curator Michael Mahoney dated May 18, 1964, in NGA curatorial files, that the ascription of the picture to Tintoretto’s workshop was based on an error and that the painting “looks very fine.”   The picture’s present state makes it impossible to affirm that judgment with certainty, however, and the possibility of studio involvement in the face and figure must be entertained.

The landscape visible through the window in the upper left is much more detailed than the generic views in the Stuttgart and Besançon pictures. It may represent a specific location on the Venetian terraferma with which the sitter had associations, although even if this is the case it may not be topographically accurate. In any case, it has not been identified, and without other clues about the sitter, it may not be possible to do so.

Nevertheless, the landscape provides important clues about the creation of the painting. Its style and pictorial technique differ from those in the landscapes in other Tintoretto portraits, but resemble the background of the Crucifixion [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto, with landscape by Marten de Vos, Crucifixion, 1552/1557, oil on canvas, Museo Civico, Padua now in the Museo Civico, Padua, which shows a similar approach to the definition of natural and architectural forms and is also rendered with a mixture of red and green tonalities. The landscape in the Crucifixion has been identified by the present author as the work of the Flemish painter Marten de Vos (1532–1603), who was in Venice at the very beginning of his career, from 1552 to 1556. According to Carlo Ridolfi, Marten insinuated himself into Tintoretto’s studio in order to learn the master’s methods and occasionally painted landscapes for him. (Although the Crucifixion is usually attributed to Tintoretto, the foreground figures have been identified by the present author as the work of Tintoretto’s associate Giovanni Galizzi.)[5]  [5]
Robert Echols, “Giovanni Galizzi and the Problem of the Young Tintoretto,” Artibus et Historiae 31 (1995): 72; Erasmus Weddigen, “Jacopo Tintoretto und die Musik,” Artibus et Historiae 5, no. 10 (1984): 113 n. 129, had previously noted the similarity of the landscape in the Padua Crucifixion to those of Marten de Vos. Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte, overo Le vite de gl’illustri pittori veneti, e dello stato (Venice, 1648), 2:75, wrote of Marten: “Giovinetto venne questi à Venetia tratto dalla fama de’ Pittori valorosi, e vedute le opera del Tintoretto insinuatosi nella casa di quello, vi studio lungamente e si fece pratico nel compor le inventioni; & alcune volte gli servì, come si disse, nel far de’ paesi.” The landscape in the Gallery’s painting also shows similarities to those in paintings executed by Marten after his return to Antwerp, such as Laban Departs to Seek Eliezer (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen), dated 1569, and the Crucifixion [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Marten de Vos, Crucifixion, 1569, oil on panel, Celle Castle Museum. © Residenzmuseum im Celler Schloss, Celle / Foto: Fotostudio Loeper, Celle and Baptism of Christ in the chapel at the castle of Celle, Hannover, of 1569.[6]  [6]
Armin Zweite, Marten de Vos als Maler: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Antwerpener Malerei in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1980), 263, 270–271, 274, cat. nos. 4, 18, and 27, figs. 4, 23, 35. The landscape in the Gallery’s portrait can be attributed on this basis to Marten, during his years in Venice, 1552–1556. Given the closeness of the portrait to Tintoretto’s dated Stuttgart (1548) and Vienna (Lorenzo Soranzo, 1553) portraits, the earlier years of the period seem most likely.[7]  [7]
Paola Rossi, Jacopo Tintoretto: I ritratti (Venice, 1974), 131, dated the portrait to c. 1548 on the basis of the similarity to the Stuttgart painting. Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:464, dated it to about 1550. Hans Tietze, Tintoretto: The Paintings and Drawings (New York, 1948), 381, and in an undated manuscript opinion in NGA curatorial files, dated it to c. 1570, as did Pierluigi De Vecchi, L’opera completa del Tintoretto (Milan, 1970), 112.

The current title was adopted by the National Gallery of Art in 2018. There is no basis for the previous title identifying the sitter as a Venetian senator, for he is not depicted wearing the robes associated with that office.[8]  [8]
Indeed, despite the Gallery’s previous title, most authors continued to use the more generic title of Portrait of a Man or Portrait of a Gentleman; see Hans Tietze, Tintoretto: The Paintings and Drawings (New York, 1948), 381; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School (London, 1957), 1:183; Paola Rossi, Jacopo Tintoretto: I ritratti (Venice, 1974), 21.

Robert Echols

March 21, 2019