(documented from 1502–1531 Turin)
Portrait of a bearded man, half-length, wearing a fur-lined coat and holding a dagger, a landscape beyond,
oil and tempera on panel, 59 x 48 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Rutherford Stuyvesant (1843–1909), New York;
with E. & A. Silberman Galleries, New York;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 11 January,1996, lot 53 (as Bartolomeo Veneto);
Private collection, USA;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 27 January 2005, lot 163 (as Bartolomeo Veneto);
Private European collection

Exhibited:
San Diego, Timken Museum of Art, The Portraits of Bartolomeo Veneto, 3 May - 11 August 2002, no. 2;
South Hadley, Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, The Intimate Baroque, Small Paintings from the John Ritter Collection, 2 March - 1 August 2004, no. 1

Bibliography:
B. Berenson, Venetian Painting in America. The Fifteenth Century, New York 1916, pp. 242-243, fig. 100 (as Marco Basaiti);
S. Reinach, Répertoire de Peintures du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance (1280-1580), Paris, 1905-1923, vol. VI, p. 312, n. 3 (as Marco Basaiti);
R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague 1923-1938, vol. XVII (1935), p. 509 (as Marco Basaiti);
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian School, London 1957, vol. I, p. 122 (as Alessandro Oliverio);
F. Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e i belliniani, Venice 1962, p. 300, n. MB 91 (as Marco Basaiti);
M. G. Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto, Alessandro Oliverio, in: I pittori bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo. Il Cinquecento, I, Bergamo 1975, p. 476, n. 11 (as not by Oliverio or Basaiti, possibly by Francesco Bissolo);
A. Tempestini, I pittori bergamaschi del primo Cinquecento, in: Antichità Viva, XV, n. 5, 1976, p. 63, note 27 (as Bartolomeo Veneto, following Eberhardt’s suggestion);
L. Pagnotta, Bartolomeo Veneto, in: Allgemeines Künstler Lexikon aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. by K. G. Saur, vol. VII, Munich-Leipzig 1992, p. 297 (as Bartolomeo Veneto);
L. Pagnotta, Bartolomeo Veneto. L’opera completa, Florence 1997, pp. 180-181, cat. n. 11, fig. 49 (as Bartolomeo Veneto);
L. Pagnotta, The Portraits of Bartolomeo Veneto, exhibition catalogue, Seattle 2002, p. 14, pl. 3; p. 62, n. 2 (as Bartolomeo Veneto)

The present painting belongs to the Venetian tradition of half-length portraiture established by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and by Antonello da Messina during his Venetian sojourn of the mid-1470s. It is one of the few remaining portraits by Bartolomeo Veneto still in a private collection.

The presentation of the subject cropped just above the waist, and innovatively including a hand, are elements derived from Flemish models which were mediated by the example of Giorgione, Lorenzo Lotto as well as Alvise Vivarini who was among the first to adopt this compositional innovation (see Pagnotta, 1997). An admiration for Flemish models, also derived from the example of Gentile Bellini, is expressed in the descriptive minutiae of the details, especially of dress and particularly the precious embroidered border of the shirt and the broad soft fur collar of the mantle.

The sculptural definition of the sitter’s features and the tendency to render form geometrically, especially recognisable in the description of the hand, reveals similarities of style to Marco Basaiti (Pagnotta, 1997). This painting was first published by Berenson (1907) who, followed by Van Marle and F. Heinemann, proposed an attribution to Marco Basaiti and a date after 1520. The former scholar subsequently changed his opinion in favour of an attribution to Alessandro Oliverio (1957). Both attributions have since been discarded in favour of Bartolomeo Veneto (H. J. Eberhardt, Tempestini 1976; Pagnotta 1993). According to Laura Pagnotta, the scholar and specialist on the artist, the present painting should be dated to the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century (Pagnotta 1997).

The present work can be compared to other early portraits by Bartolomeo Veneto such as his Young Man in Munich (Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, cfr. Pagnotta 2002, p. 14, fig. 17), the Portrait of a Gentleman in the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Portrait of Beata Beatrice II d’Este in the Snite Museum of Art, South Bend. These works afford close similarities in relation to the half length presentation of the figure, as well as to the slightly turned head (three-quarters) and the subject’s intense, yet fleeting glance in the direction of the viewer; similarities occur in the fine and precise description of the subject’s features (Pagnotta 1997). The low setting of the horizon allows the present subject’s head to be clearly silhouetted against the broad sky over the landscape, which again reveals close affinities to the landscape background of the South Bend Beata Beatrice II d’Este (Pagnotta 1997, 2002).