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Shown from the chest up against a black background, two men with peachy skin, one holding a brass-colored sphere made up of interlocking bands, fill this horizontal portrait painting. To our left, a boy or young man looks at us with dark eyes and his coral-pink lips are parted. His curly brown hair falls to his shoulders, and he wears a floppy, denim-blue hat. His emerald-green tunic is lined around the neck, shoulders, and down the front with bands of ruby red, and the neck is tied with a pale purple ribbon. A white shirt underneath shows at the neck and down a slit along the shoulder we can see. Along the bottom edge of the composition, the boy grips a paint brush, a quill pen, a flute, and a compass in his left fist. The man to our right leans toward the boy almost in profile. The second man has ash-brown, curly hair and the suggestion of a short beard on his chin. He has hooded eyes, a prominent nose, and his downturned lips are also parted. He wears a honey-yellow tunic over a white undergarment. A swath of scarlet red over his left shoulder, to our right, could be a cloak. In the space between the people, he holds up the armillary sphere, made up of overlapping bands to create an orb, in his right hand, on our left. A long, white scroll curls around the handle of the sphere, the man’s hand, and down near his wrist. The scroll is inscribed, “NON VALET. INGENIVM.NISI FACTA VALEBVNT.” He looks at the sphere and points to it with his other hand.

Attributed to Giorgione

Giovanni Borgherini and His Tutor

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 17

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 47 x 60.7 cm (18 1/2 x 23 7/8 in.)

framed: 71.4 x 86 x 5.1 cm (28 1/8 x 33 7/8 x 2 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Michael Straight

Accession Number

1974.87.1

Artists / Makers

Giorgione (painter) Venetian, 1477/1478 - 1510

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower center on scroll: NON VALET. / INGENIVM.NISI / FACTA/ VALEBVNT (Talent has no worth unless accomplishment follows)

Provenance

Probably sons of the sitter, Giovanni Borgherini [b. 1496], Florence, and then by inheritance in the Borgherini family, until at least 1568;[1] probably by inheritance to the sitter's great-great-grandson, Cavaliere Pier-Francesco Borgherini [1637-1718]; his descendants or private collection, Milan;[2] sold 1923 to Sir Herbert Frederick Cook, 3rd Bt. [1868-1939], Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey, until at least 1932;[3] (Thos. Agnew and Sons, London); purchased 1960 by Michael Straight, Alexandria, Virginia;[4] gift 1974 to NGA.

[1] G. Vasari, Le Vite, 1568 (Milanesi ed., vol. IV, 1879: 94): "In Fiorenza è di man sua in cas de' figliuoli di Giovan Borgherini il ritratto d'esso Giovanni, guando era giovane in Venezia, e nel medesimo quadro il maestro che le guidava; che non si può veder in due teste nè più bella tinta di ombre." ("In Florence there is by him [Giorgione] in the house of the sons of Giovanni Borgherini the portrait of the later, when he was young, in Venice, and in the same picture the master who taught him; one cannot see in two heads better flesh coloring or more beautiful nuances of shading." Translation in Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, 1979: 1:217.)

[2] According to M.W. Brockwell, Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures at Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey, in the Collection of Sir Herbert Cook, London, 1932: 69-70, the painting "was purchased in 1923 from a gentleman in Milan whose great-grandfather received it from a great-nephew of Cavaliere Pier-francisco Borgherini who, as we have seen, died in 1718." The dealer's memorandum on the painting, supplied to NGA's donor in 1960, says "This picture was purchased by Sir Herbert Cook in 1923 from a private collection in Milan where it had been since 1718 when it had been purchased from Cavaliere Pier Francesco Borgherini, the great great grandson of Giovanni Borgherini, the sitter in the picture." Shapley 1979: 1:218 describes the transaction as "acquired in London in 1925 after being purchased in Milan in 1923 from a descendant of [Cavaliere Borgherini]."

[3] M.W. Brockwell, Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures at Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey, in the Collection of Sir Herbert Cook, London, 1932: 69-70.

[4] The painting was introduced to Mr. Straight in February 1960 by then-director of the NGA, John Walker. See the correspondence between Walker and Straight in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Borgherini, Pier-Francesco, Cavaliere
Cook, 3rd bt., Herbert Frederick, Sir
Straight, Michael Whitney

Exhibition History

1953: Loan Exhibition of Thirty-Nine Masterpieces of Venetian Painting. In Honour of the Coronation, and In Aid of the King George VI Memorial Fund, Thos. Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London, 1953, no. 25, as by The Master of the Pitti Three Ages.

1955: Italian Art from the 13th to the 17th Centuries, Birmingham (England) Museum and Art Gallery, 1955, no. 72, as by the Master of the Pitti Three Ages.

1998: A Collector's Cabinet, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, no. 22, fig. 53.

2000: Dipingere la Musica: Strumenti in posa nell'arte dal Quattrocento al Seicento, Centro Culturale Santa Maria della Pietà, Cremona; Kunsthistorisches Museum Art Center, Palais Harrach, Vienna, 2000-2001, no. IV.10.

Bibliography

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:217-218; 2:pl. 148, 148A, as Circle of Giorgione.

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

1997: Anderson, Jaynie. Giorgione: The Painter of "Poetic Brevity". New York, 1997: 314-315, repro.

2004: Danziger, Elon. "he Cook Collection: Its Founder and Its Inheritors." The Burlington Magazine 146, no. 1216 (July 2004): 455.

2007: Brucher, Günter. Geschichte der Venezianischen Malerei. 4 vols. Vol. 3: Von Giorgione zum frühen Tizian. Vienna, 2007-2015: 3(2013):170-173, fig. 48.

2013: Frank, Mary Engel. “'Donne attempate': Women of a Certain Age in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Art.” 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2006: 1:281, 319, fig. 212.

2016: Myers, Jeffrey Rayner. "The Secular Conversation of Giorgione's Giovanni Borgherini and His Tutor." Source: Notes in the History of Art 36, no. 1 (Fall 2016): 16-26, 17 fig. 1.