Portrait of a Young Man

c. 1475/1479

Antonello da Messina

Painter, Sicilian, c. 1430 - 1479

Shown from the chest up, a clean shaven, young man with pale, rosy skin and curly, mahogany-red hair, looks at or toward us against a black background in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and he turns his face slightly to look our way with sienna-brown eyes under curved eyebrows. He has a long, prominent nose and small thin pink lips. His shoulder length hair curls tightly around his face and covers his ears. He wears a tomato-red shirt with a high collar trimmed with white.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 12

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera and oil on poplar panel

  • Credit Line

    Andrew W. Mellon Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 33 x 24.8 cm (13 x 9 3/4 in.)
    framed: 62.2 x 56.2 x 14 cm (24 1/2 x 22 1/8 x 5 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1937.1.31

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Palazzo Contarini-Mocenigo a S. Beneto, Venice, until the mid 19th century.[1] Princes Giovanelli, Venice, by 1871 until the early 1930s.[2] (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York); purchased 15 December 1936 by The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA.
[1] According to Gianjacopo Fontana, Venezia monumentale pittoresca, Venice, 1863[?]: 258 (Reprint ed., Lino Moretti, Venice, 1967: 278). See also Otto Mündler, "The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler," ed. Carol Togneri Dowd. Walpole Society 51 (1985): 82, 257; he describes the painting, which he saw in November 1855, as "Fine portrait by Ant. da Messina, which has been barbarously cut and reduced on the sides."
[2] Agostino D'Amico, "Antonello da Messina, le sue opere e l'invenzione della pittura ad olio." Archivo Storico Messinese 5, no. 1-2 (1904); 113, reports that, according to a letter from Commendatore Barozzi dated 23 June 1902, the painting came from the Manfrin Collection toward the end of the eighteenth century. The NGA portrait is too large to be identifiable with a "testa" given to Antonello in the Catalogo dei quadri esistenti nella Galleria Manfrin in Venezia, Venice, 1856: no. 62 (27 x 31 cm). But a "testina di giovanetto" attributed to a Flemish artist, no. 5 in the same inventory (37 x 29 cm), if it were subsequently cut down as the NGA painting appears to be, could be a candidate.
[3] The original Duveen Brothers invoice is in Gallery Archives, copy in NGA curatorial files. The painting is listed as from the collection of the Palazzo Giovanelli in Venice, and formerly in the Palace of Alvise Mocenigo at San Stae.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2013

  • Antonello da Messina, Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, 2013-2014, no. 34, repro.

Bibliography

1941

  • Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 70, repro.

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 7, no. 31.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 239, repro. 57.

1949

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 32, repro.

1957

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 63.

1960

  • The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 6.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 302, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 9.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 2, repro.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 10, 645.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 14, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:17-18; 2:pl. 11.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 118, no. 102, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 31, repro.

  • Mündler, Otto. "The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler." Ed. Carol Togneri Dowd. Walpole Society 51 (1985): 82. 257.

1991

  • Morandotti, Alessandro. "La fortuna collezionistica della pittura gotica e rinascimentale fra Ottocento e Novecento." In Mauro Natale, ed. Pittura italiana dal '300 al '500. Milan, 1991: fig. 11.

1993

  • Gagliardi, Jacques. La conquête de la peinture: L’Europe des ateliers du XIIIe au XVe siècle. Paris, 1993: 581.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 42-45, color repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20174221

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