Portrait of a Young Man

Negretti Jacopo called Jacopo Palma the Elder

(Serina c. 1480 - Venice 1528)

This male portrait is a fine example of early 16th-century portraiture, typical of the Veneto school. It is modelled on the Flemish figurative style, which reached the lagoon area via the workshop of Bellini, to whose followers the portrait in question has over time been attributed. It was ascribed to Palma the Elder on stylistic grounds, on the basis of the profile of the head, the cold colour tones and the indistinct outline of the mouth.

Object details

Commentary

In the catalogue of the collection, Paola Della Pergola attributes the painting to Palma the Elder (Della Pergola 1955, p. 125, no. 225). This opinion came to be widely accepted, but only after various other suggestions were made, beginning with the inventory of 1693, when the painting was recorded as a work by Pordenone (Della Pergola 1963, pp. 459-463). In the Fideicommissary inventory of 1833, the painting is recorded as a work by Simone Cantarini (p. 33) and as such appeared in Piancastelli’s 1891 catalogue (Piancastelli 1891). More prudently, Venturi assigned the painting to the Veneto circle, specifically to the “school of Giovanni Bellini”, emphasising how “the portrait lacks relief in the planes, but is executed with diligence, and renders the characters of the figure softly, his lips tumid, his eyes full of idealism, though not his neck, which is of excessive width. The background landscape ends with a line of deep blue mountains standing out against a sky at sunset” (Venturi 1893, p. 207). Indeed, Bellini had already been alluded to when Cavalcaselle put forward the name of Vittore Belliniano (Cavalcaselle 1871, I, p. 284). Longhi, taking up a tentative suggestion made by Bernardini in 1910, saw in it the manner of Palma the Elder (Longhi 1927, p. 218). Wilde (Wilde 1933, VII, p. 134), later echoed by Berenson (Berenson 1951, pp. 72-74), still tended towards Bellini's circle, while Heinemann (1962, I, p. 145) favoured Andrea Previtali. Of all these suggestions, however, Longhi's proposal that the painting was the work of the young Jacopo Negretti was the one most endorsed by later critics (Della Pergola 1955; Ballarin 1968; Rylands 1988). The use of the half-length portrait seen from a three-quarter view is undeniably from Bellini's workshop, whose inspiration is Flemish in origin. There are some similar examples, such as the Portrait of Joerg Fugger in the Norton Simon Museum, in Pasadena and the outstanding Portrait of a Young Man in the Accademia di Carrara. Despite the inscription, which indicates the date and young age of the sitter, he has never been identified. When compared with the paintings of a few decades earlier, the great innovation here is the depiction of the landscape behind the subject, which completely replaces the neutral background against which subjects were traditionally placed. This element serves to give a psychological impetus to the delineation of the figure. An impetus that may also stem from the function of these artefacts – it has been suggested they had a private function, as a visual souvenir to be exchanged between acquaintances and friends (Ballarin 1983, p. 491). Alessandra Zamperini rightly points out in a related study (Zamperini 2011, pp. 471-472) that, in addition to some elements of the landscape, an altar including a similar inscription is also found in Giovanni Bellini's Madonna and Child in the Pinacoteca di Brera. The divergence from a strictly Bellini style lies not so much in the relationship between figure and landscape as in the dominant psychological depth found in the character’s gaze. This aspect suggests an assimilation of Giorgionesque teaching from the first decade of the 16th century, with the focus on the subject's facial features. Aside from these considerations, the decision not to forego certain stylistic features, such as the inclination of the head, the lack of emphasis on the outline of the lips and the use of cold colour tones, brings the painting closer to the hand of Palma the Elder.

Fabrizio Carinci