Portrait of a Man

Attributed to Sanzio, Raphael

(Urbino 1483 - Rome 1520)

The picture shows the head and upper body of a man, depicted in front pose. His head is almost imperceptibly turned to the right in contrast to the direction of his gaze, and he wears a black robe. The face, framed by long hair and topped by a wide black cap, stands out against the blue sky, while the landscape in the background is barely visible. The work, attributed to Holbein in the 1833 fideicommissary list, was not in its current state: the figure wore a different, wider headdress and a heavy fur tunic open over a shirt trimmed with lace. Attributed first to Perugino, then to Raphael and Pinturicchio, the panel was restored in 1911; it was freed of considerable overpainting and repainting, which fortunately preserved the face and its remarkable nuances. Even today, the subject, thought by some to be a self-portrait by Perugino or Serafino Aquilano, has not been identified. The debate is still ongoing, basically dividing critics between whether it should be attributed to Raphael or his master Pietro Perugino.

Object details

Commentary

The provenance of the painting is unknown. It might be identifiable as one described in an inventory dated 1700 which refers to the paintings in the ground floor apartment of Prince Borghese at the Palazzo di Ripetta. It mentions a portrait ‘by Pietro Perugino painted by Raphael’ (De Rinaldis 1936; Della Pergola 1959). It has also been hypothesised (Della Pergola 1959; Barberini, in Raffaello nelle raccolte Borghese, 1984; Marcelli, in Perugino 2004; Zalabra, in Melozzo da Forlì, 2011) that it may have come from the Aldobrandini collection. This theory, however, does not seem to tie in with the 1700 reference, given that the Aldobrandini primogeniture was only acquired by the second-born Borghese after 1767. In 1794, Vasi mentioned seeing in the mezzanine floors of Prince Aldobrandini in Palazzo Borghese ‘a portrait, by Pietro Perugino’ (Vasi 1794; Della Pergola 1959).

The panel can only be identified with certainty starting with the Borghese fideicommissary list of 1833, where it was included among the masterpieces of the Flemish school in the collection as a painting by Holbein, together with another panel of the same size (respectively under nos. 18-19), now attributed to Hans Leonhard Schäufelein (inv. 287).

In 1869, Mündler (in Burckhardt 1869, p. 844), in his notes on Cicero, suggested that the portrait be attributed to Perugino, believing it to be ‘a beautiful self-portrait of the master’, prompting a debate on the subject and the painter of the panel that has never been fully settled. At the time, the panel did not look as it does today: the figure wore a different, wider headdress and a heavy fur tunic open over a shirt trimmed with lace, as documented in the photo in Venturi's catalogue (1893).

In 1885, Minghetti argued for recognising Raphael’s hand in the portrait, conjecturing that Pinturicchio was the subject depicted. Giovanni Morelli (1897) with a famous passage in which, in addition to praising the liveliness of the eyes and the splendour of the complexion, the poor condition of the panel was noted, firmly asserted that it be attributed to the Urbino master. This opinion was shared by the then director of the Gallery Giovanni Piancastelli, but not accepted by all the critics of the time, such as Venturi (1893), who continued to uphold the authorship of Perugino.

In 1911, due to severe deterioration in the portrait's paint surface, its restoration was begun and entrusted to Luigi Cavenaghi under the supervision of Giulio Cantalamessa. During the operation, the headdress, evidently larger in the underlying painting, and the fur tunic were removed. The result, which virtually corresponds to its current appearance, although impressive, did not prove to be conclusive in terms of attribution. Cantalamessa's opinion shifted in favour of Perugino's authorship, as did Venturi's (1913), even though numerous scholars supported Raphael: from Berenson (1932) to Longhi (1955), Della Pergola (1959) to Fischel (1962), Dussler (1966; 1971) to Herrmann Fiore (1992; 1997) and Ferino (1994), to name but a few.

Identifying the subject is also problematic. After Mündler’s earlier identification of the work as Perugino's self-portrait, disproved by the portrait at the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia, and the suggestion that it portrays the cantor Serafino Ciminelli, known as Serafino Aquilano (Venturi 1893), the identity of the subject, however, remains unknown.

Although compressed in a rigid frontal pose, accentuated by the small format, the remarkable three-dimensionality of the head powerfully contrasts with the flattening effect of the dark, gloomy robe, recalling the Urbino portraits of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and Elisabetta della Rovere in the Uffizi, as well as echoes of Flemish painting typical of that cultural context.

The most recent analyses have also confirmed the very high quality of the face, which is the area most spared from repainting and therefore the most unblemished.

Over time, critics have generally tended to attribute the painting to Perugino (Scarpellini, 1984; Garibaldi, 1999; Meyer zu Capellen, 2008 Marcelli, in Perugino 2004; Pierini, 2023).

Although this work is indeed quite different from Raphael's early paintings, a comparison with ascertained works by Perugino such as the Portrait of Francesco delle Opere (Florence, Uffizi Galleries, inv. 1890, no. 1700) and the Self-portrait in Perugia (Nobile Collegio del Cambio) does not seem to settle the attribution question either, since there was a close bond between the two artists and they both worked in a milieu strongly marked by influences from beyond the Alps.

Marina Minozzi