Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman

c. 1500

Giovanni Bellini

Artist, Venetian, c. 1430/1435 - 1516

Shown from the shoulders up, a clean-shaven, pale-skinned man with shoulder-length brown hair and dressed in black fills this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and his shoulders extend off both sides of the composition. He looks off to our left with brown eyes under thin brows. He has a long, slightly bumped nose and the hint of a five-o-clock shadow around his pale pink lips, which are closed. His brimless black cap nearly touches the top edge of the composition. His wavy hair is cut into bangs across his forehead and is feathered down each side of his face to meet the longer hair at the back. He has a high-necked, ink-black garment lined with white across his neck. Two bands of white clouds span the azure-blue sky behind him. A stone ledge in front of the man, across the bottom of composition, is painted to look like it had been carved with the artist’s name: “IOANNES BELLINVS.” Two numbers are painted in the lower corners, with “98” to the left and “44” to the right.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 12

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel transferred to panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    painted surface: 27.6 x 18 cm (10 7/8 x 7 1/16 in.)
    overall: 29.69 x 20 cm (11 11/16 x 7 7/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.254

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The early history of the painting is unknown.[1] Baron Alfred Charles de Rothschild [1842-1918], London and Halton House, near Wendover, Buckinghamshire; by inheritance to his daughter, Almina Victoria Marie Alexandra, Countess of Carnarvon [c. 1877-1969], London; (her sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 22 May 1925, no. 50); purchased by (P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London and New York), on joint account with (M. Knoedler & Co., London and New York);[2] sold 1926 to Thornton Realty Co., New York. Mrs. J. Horace Harding [née Dorothea Barney, 1871-1935], New York, by 1929. (Simmons, New York); sold 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] To the left of the signature is the number "98" and to the right, "44" (not visible in reproductions made before the painting was cleaned), which are evidently inventory numbers in former collections. Georg Gronau, Giovanni Bellini, New York, 1930: 213, proposed that the painting might be identical with one ("Bellino - ritratto d'homo con cornice d'oro") mentioned in the Arundel Collection (Lionel Cust, "Notes on the Collections Formed by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, K.G.," The Burlington Magazine XIX, no. 101 [August 1911]: 278-286), but the brief description could apply to any of Bellini's signed portraits of the standard type.
[2] According to the Getty Provenance Index, the painting was Colnaghi's stock number A 1273, and Knoedler's London stock number 7467 and New York stock number 16203.
[3] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1708.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1929

  • Loan Exhibition of Primitives, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1929, no. 3, as Portrait of a Gentleman.

1935

  • Fifteenth Century Portraits, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1935, no. 6, repro., as Portrait of a Gentleman.

2013

  • Albrecht Dürer: His Art in Context, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 2013-2014, no. 6.8, repro.

Bibliography

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 21, no. 365.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 70.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 141, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 11.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 5, repro.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 41, fig. 97.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972; 23, 646.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 20, repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 40, repro.

1991

  • Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 183, color repro.

1992

  • Tempestini, Anchise. Giovanni Bellini: catalogo completo dei dipinti. Florence, 1992: 205, no. 72, repro.

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: 67-69, color repro.

2008

  • Lucco, Mauro, and Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, eds. Giovanni Bellini. Exh. cat. Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, 2008: 81, 240.

2019

  • Lucco, Mauro, Peter Humfrey, and Giovanni C.F. Villa. Giovanni Bellini: Catalogo ragionato. Treviso, 2019: 493, cat. 128.

Inscriptions

lower center on parapet: . IOANNES.BELLINVS . ; lower left, an inventory number: 98; lower right, an inventory number: 44

Wikidata ID

Q20174794

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