Portrait of a man
(Castelfranco Veneto c. 1477 - Venice 1510)
The painting is thought to be a copy – by no means wholly faithful – of Giorgione's so-called Terris Portrait of around 1506. Although the layering of the paint and certain specific features, such as the opening of the dark robe over the white collar of the shirt, show a clear correlation with Giorgione’s portraiture, there remains a deep divide between the Borghese painting and the Castelfranco Master's extraordinary original.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, 46 x 40.5 x 5.5 cm
Provenance
Rome, Borghese collection; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 24. Purchased by the Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1952 Augusto Cecconi Principi
Commentary
The work depicts a man in three-quarter profile, wearing a dark robe and a white shirt only just visible, who meets the gaze of the viewer. The complexion and red lips contrast with the dark, piercing eyes of the subject, while his clothing and hair almost blend in with the background, making it difficult to take in the work as a whole.
The painting is thought to be a copy – by no means wholly faithful – of Giorgione's so-called Terris Portrait from around 1506, held in the San Diego Museum of Art. Although the layering of the paint and certain specific features, such as the opening of the dark robe over the white collar of the shirt, show a clear correlation with Giorgione's portraiture, there remains a deep divide between the Borghese painting and the Castelfranco Master's extraordinary original. In Piancastelli's catalogue (1891), the portrait is ascribed to Bronzino on the basis of the previous inventory listing of 1833, when the painting was exhibited in the Stanza delle Veneri in Palazzo Borghese along with various other masterpieces.
Adolfo Venturi (1893) put forward the name of Ottavio Leoni (1578-1630), who worked in the service of the Borghese family in the second decade of the 17th century. This suggestion was, however, rejected by Longhi (1928) and subsequent critics, who generally considered the work to be a 17th-century copy of the above-mentioned Giorgione original. The hypothesis of tracing the creation of this copy to the set of 17th-century replicas made for the family from the originals they owned (Della Pergola 1955) cannot be taken any further at present, not least because neither the original nor the copy can be identified in the available Borghese inventories.
Pier Ludovico Puddu
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 255;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 76;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 185;
- P. Della Pergola, Galleria Borghese. I dipinti, I, Roma 1955, p. 114, n. 203;
- K. Garas, Bildnisse der Renaissance II : Dürer und Giorgione, in “Acta Historiae Artium”, 18, 1972, 1/2, p. 133;
- T. Pignatti, Giorgione, Venezia 1978, p. 113, n. 26;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 31.
