(Venice circa 1548–1628)
Self-portrait as a Monk,
oil on slate, 30.5 x 24.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection Bardisian, Venice;
art market, Spain;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
S. Mason Rinaldi, Novità, ritrovamenti e restituzioni a Jacopo Palma il Giovane, in: Arte Veneta, 1982, p. 152, ill. p. 153, fig. 10 (as Jacopo Palma il Giovane);
S. Mason Rinaldi, Palma il Giovane: l’opera completa, Milano 1990, p. 146 cat. no. 565, illustrated p. 360 fig. 428 (as Jacopo Palma il Giovane);
M. Seidel, Venezianische Malerei zur Zeit der Gegenreformation: kirchliche Programmschriften und künstlerische Bildkonzepte bei Tizian, Tintoretto, Veronese und Palma il Giovane, Munich 1996, p. 57 footnote 108, not illustrated (as Jacopo Palma il Giovane);
J. Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture. The Visual construction of identity and the social status of the artist, New Haven & London 1998,
p. 240 (as Jacopo Palma il Giovane);
K. T. Brown, The painter’s reflection. Self-portraiture in Renaissance Venice 1458-1625, Florence 2000, p. 157 cat. no. 17, fig. 55 (as Jacopo Palma il Giovane);
G. Fossaluzza, in: Pietra dipinta: tesori nascosti del ’500 e del ’600 da una collezione privata milanese, exhibition catalogue, ed. by M. Bona Castellotti, Milan 2000, cited under cat. no. 37, p. 76, not illustrated (as Jacopo Palma il Giovane);
A. Weston-Lewis/P. Humfrey, in: The age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance art from Scottish collections, Edinburgh 2004, p. 264, cited under cat. no. 117, not illustrated (as Jacopo Palma il Giovane)

Palma Giovane portrays himself in the robes of a monk in this small painting on slate; the robes he wears are likely those of a friar of the Ordine dei Crociferi, as Ridolfi recounts, ‘a’ quali visse sempre Palma devoto, poiché fin da fanciullo fù da quelli avuto in protettione’ [‘with whom Palma always lived devotedly, as since boyhood he was under their protection’] (see R. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte…, Venice 1648, II, p. 179). The painter represents himself with a thoughtful and saddened expression, and as in his other late self-portraits, only his ‘grandi occhi tristissimi’ [‘large sad eyes’] emerge prominently (see Mason Rinaldi 1984 in literature); here he shows himself raising one hand to his chest in a gesture of piety.

The contrast with the artist’s early Self-portrait, in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan (inv. no. 109) made some twenty years earlier is striking: here he is show as optimistic as he is disillusioned in the present, later, painting. Palma represents himself as pious and at about the age of sixty: he seems to have been the only Italian artist in this epoch to have represented their association in a self-portrait with a specific Order aligned with the church’s official doctrine of Catholic reform (see Woods-Marsden in literature).

According to Brown (see literature) the present painting can be dated to 1606. Indeed, the artist’s features are perfectly recognisable and coincide exactly with those in his drawn Self-portrait at the Age of 58 in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (inv. no. IV.82.1) which is dated 1606, as well as with his Self-portrait in the Fondazione Querini Stampilia, Venice, wherein the artist represents himself with furrowed features and deep-set eyes.

The painting is on an unusual support for Palma and indeed only one other painting by him on slate is known: the Christ supported by angels. Palma only rarely attempted experimental techniques, these include a painting on leather, another on copper and the studies on card-board for the Head of an old man and for a Portrait of a girl in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan (see Fossaluzza in literature).

Born into a family of artists that included his father Antonio Palma (circa 1510-1575), his great-uncle Palma il Vecchio (1549-1628) and his uncle Bonifacio de’ Pitati, called Bonifacio Veronese (1487-1553), Palma il Giovane enjoyed a long and distinguished career. His precocious talent was recognised by Guidobaldo II della Rovere, duke of Urbino, who summoned the young artist to his court when he saw the fifteen-year-old Palma copying Titian’s Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in 1564. It is thought he went to Pesaro and then to Rome, returning to Venice in 1574 when he may have worked in the studio of Titian. After Jacopo Tintoretto’s (1518-1594) death, Palma became one of the leading painters in Venice. Signalling the high regard in which he was held, he was commissioned to complete Titian’s unfinished Pietà (now Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice), this, Palma proudly inscribed: ‘QUOD TITIANVS INCHOATVM RELIQUIT PALMA REVERENTVR ABSOLVIT DEOQ. DICAVIT OPVS’.