A. Mazzotta, "A ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ by Titian in the National Gallery, London", in...

USA $37·95 £16.60/€19.80January 2012

THEBURLINGTONMAGAZINE

JANUARY2012

NO. 1306

VOL. C

LIV

VeniceTitian’s early ‘Flight into Egypt’ | Titian’s ‘Portrait of a man’ in the National Gallery

Veronese in S. Sebastiano | Bellotto in Florence and in Dresden

Sir Richard Worsley’s collection | Acquisitions at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Fra Angelico | Claude Lorrain | Indian painting | Madox Brown | Degas | Soviet architecture

COV.JAN12.v.3_cover.june.pp.corr 06/12/2011 15:09

‘AT THE TIME he first began to paint like Giorgione, when hewas no more than eighteen, [Titian] made the portrait of a gen-tleman of the Barbarigo family, a friend of his, which was held tobe extremely fine, for the representation of the flesh-colour wastrue and realistic and the hairs were so well distinguished onefrom the other that they might have been counted, as might thestitches in a doublet of silvered satin which also appeared in thatwork. In short the picture was thought to show great diligenceand to be very successful. Titian signed it in the shadow, but ifhe had not done so, it would have been taken for Giorgione’swork. Meanwhile, after Giorgione himself had executed theprincipal façade of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, Titian, throughBarbarigo’s intervention, was commissioned to paint certainscenes for the same building, above the Merceria’.1Vasari’s evocative and detailed description, which would

seem to be the result of seeing the painting in the flesh, led JeanPaul Richter in 1895 to believe that it could be identified withTitian’s Portrait of a man then in the collection of the Earl ofDarnley at Cobham Hall and now in the National Gallery, London (Fig.15).2 Up to that date it was famous as ‘Titian’sAriosto’, a confusion that, as we shall see, had been born in theseventeenth century. In one respect it looked rather different inRichter’s time and closer to Vasari’s description than it doesnow. Photographs taken before its restoration in 1949 revealthat there was some repainting which thickened the man’s beardand hair, making it appear – more than it does now – that thehairs were ‘so well distinguished one from the other’.3 Also at that time his name written ‘in the shadow’ was still on theparapet. What now reads as Titian’s initials (‘· T · V ·’) had beenoverpainted to read ‘TITIANVS · V ·’, with the last ‘V’ superimposedover the original ‘T’ and, to the right, the original ‘V’.4 By ‘inthe shadow’ (‘in ombra’), a term that does not occur anywhereelse in the Lives, Vasari probably intended to indicate the illusionistic effect given by a signature ‘carved’ on the parapet,

I am very grateful to Giovanni Agosti, Nicholas Penny and Carol Plazzotta for havingfollowed every phase of my research on this work, encouraged me and commented andcorrected an earlier draft of this article. My heartfelt thanks also the staff of the libraryof the National Gallery. A special thank you goes to Jennifer Fletcher for her advice.1 ‘A principio, dunque, che cominciò seguitare la maniera di Giorgione, non avendo più chediciotto anni, [Tiziano] fece il ritratto d’un gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo, amico suo, che futenuto molto bello, essendo la somiglianza della carnagione propria e naturale, e sì ben distintii capelli l’uno dall’altro che si conterebbono, come anco si farebbono i punti d’un giubone di rasoinargentato che fece in quell’opera. Insomma, fu tenuto sì ben fatto e con tanta diligenza, che,se Tiziano non vi avesse scritto in ombra il suo nome, sarebbe stato tenuto opera di Giorgione.Intanto, avendo esso Giorgione condotta la facciata dinanzi del Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, permezzo del Barbarigo furono allogate a Tiziano alcune storie che sono nella medesima sopra laMerceria’; G. Vasari: Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del1550 e 1568, ed. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi, VI, Florence 1987, p.156.2 J.P. Richter: ‘The winter exhibition of works by the Old Masters’, The Art Journal (1895), p.90.3 It is reproduced, for example, in R.E. Fry: ‘Titian’s “Ariosto’’’, THE BURLINGTONMAGAZINE 6 (1904), pp.136–39.4 This inscription was still present in 1639, given that it appears in Reinier van Per-syn’s engraving after a drawing by Joachim von Sandrart (Lugt Collection, FondationCustodia, Paris). The presence of the inscription at that date is confirmed by another

drawn copy after Titian by Theodor Matham (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum,Braunschweig; inv. no.Z 1305); repr in P. Humfrey et al., eds.: exh. cat. The Age ofTitian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, Edinburgh (National Galleryof Scotland) 2004, p.105, fig.102. For the changes to the inscription, see C. Gould:National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1975, p.281. 5 See S. Battaglia: Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, I, Turin 1961, p.643. The ice-blue colour we see now was probably originally more of a violet hue, given thaton the surface the red lake has deteriorated, although it is still present in the paintlayers immediately below. The sleeve was then striped with long red streaks (still justperceptible in good light conditions), which refine and emphasise the padded effect;see J. Dunkerton and M. Spring: ‘The Technique and Materials of Titian’s EarlyPaintings in The National Gallery, London’, in S. Janssen, ed.: Titian: Jacopo Pesarobeing presented by Pope Alexander VI to Saint Peter, Antwerp 2003, pp.9–21.6 The Barbarigo identity was enthusiastically taken up by C. Phillips: ‘The “Ariosto”of Titian’, The Art Journal (1905), p.6, who, however, attributed the identification toHerbert Cook rather than Richter; see H. Cook: Giorgione, London 1900, pp.69–70;earlier Phillips had doubted the identification; see C. Phillips: The Earlier Work of Titian,London 1897, pp.58 and 60, note 3. Some scholars believe that the portrait is a self- portrait; see Gould, op. cit. (note 4), pp.280–83; and most recently P. Holberton: reviewof E.M. Dal Pozzolo: Giorgione, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 153 (2011), p.676.7 G. Tagliaferro: ‘L’Ariosto di Tiziano (Londra) non è Ariosto; e il Barbarigo non si

12 january 2012 • cliv • the burlington magazine

A ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ by Titian in the National Gallery, Londonby ANTONIO MAZZOTTA

15. Portrait of a man (here identified as Gerolamo(?) Barbarigo), by Titian. c.1509.Canvas, 81.2 by 66.3 cm. (National Gallery, London).

which was legible because it ‘cast’ a shadow. It is still possible tosee what Vasari describes as ‘the stitches in a doublet of silveredsatin’ which dot the ample sleeve (the ‘giubone’) of iridescentsatin which can certainly be described as ‘inargentato’, an adjective

MA.JAN.MAZZOTTA.pg.proof.corrs_Layout 1 08/12/2011 15:31 Page 12

that does not necessarily imply a silver colour, but merely silverytranslucent reflections.5While initially Richter’s suggestion met with a certain success,

in the course of the last century scholars gradually abandoned thetheory, frightened by the possibility that such an identificationwould imply a very early date for the painting. Vasari wrote thatTitian painted the portrait when he was ‘no more than eighteen’,and that when Giorgione had finished painting the façade of theFondaco de’ Tedeschi, Barbarigo arranged for Titian to paintsome scenes on the same building above the Merceria: thiswould have had to have been around 1508. Today few peoplebelieve that the Portrait of a man is the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’described by Vasari.6Some years ago, Giorgio Tagliaferro published, on Augusto

Gentili’s suggestion, a partial copy of Titian’s portrait (Fig.16)which had just appeared on the market: a work of interest not forits pictorial qualities (which are few) but for the inscription thatappears in the top right-hand side, under the Barbarigo coat ofarms: ‘AVGVSTINVS BARBDICVS / AEQUES PATAVII PRAEFECTVS /ANNO MDLXV’.7 Tagliaferro argued that the presence of the Barbarigo coat of arms on a copy (even a partial copy) of theNational Gallery portrait, combined with Vasari’s precisedescription, was enough to prove that the sitter was indeed the‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’. Yet the inscription on the copyrefers to a Barbarigo who cannot possibly be the man painted byTitian: this was the famous Agostino, born in 1516, Prefect ofPadua in 1565, who died in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.8 Weknow what he looked like, for several portraits of him exist, themost famous of which is that by Veronese of a little after 1571(Cleveland Museum of Art).9 Then how are we to explain this ‘transplant’ of the face of the National Gallery portrait?Tagliaferro proposed various theories, the most convincing ofwhich was that ‘in the absence of the sitter, the portrait of Agostino Barbarigo was copied from a prototype of a relation orancestor’.10 Tagliaferro accepted the date of 1565 for the work,and attributed it to Titian’s circle. In this article an alternative butcomplementary solution is proposed.A cutting from a catalogue in the Paris Bordone files in the

Witt Library in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, allowspart of the provenance of the Portrait of Agostino Barbarigo to betraced: until 1938 it was in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinan-deum in Innsbruck, when it was sent for sale in Vienna togetherwith a large part of the Museum’s reserve collection.11 It had arri-

ved at the Ferdinandeum in 1887 with an attribution to ParisBordone in the bequest of Ludwig von Wieser.12 Among thefifty paintings donated by Von Wieser, there was also a portraitof ‘Generale Pietro Barbarigo’ attributed to Leandro Bassano.13Pietro Barbarigo (1569–1618) was the son of another Agostinowhose identity is not certain, and it would seem likely that hisportrait and that of Agostino belonged to a series of commemo-rative posthumous effigies of the Barbarigo family painted at thestart of the seventeenth century.14 For this reason it is not neces-sary to take 1565 as the date at which the Agostino Barbarigo waspainted, only as an important date for the man portrayed. Thusthe explanation could be that at the start of the seventeenth cen-tury the Barbarigo family commissioned a series of portraits ofcelebrated members of their house, some dead for many years,similar to that which was commissioned in the same years for thedecoration of the villa Barbarigo at Noventa Vicentina.15Lacking a model for one portrait, it was decided to use the faceof the London portrait, which was evidently still in the Barbarigo

sa chi sia’, VeneziAltrove (2005), pp.118–39.8 A. Stella: ‘Barbarigo, Agostino’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani (hereafter cited asDBI), VI, Rome 1964, pp.50–52.9 There is a smaller version of this posthumous portrait (probably a study for it) inthe State Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; for both see J. Garton: Grace and Grandeur:The Portraiture of Paolo Veronese, London and Turnhout 2008, pp.83–111, pls.17–18.10 Tagliaferro, op. cit. (note 7), p.127.11 Vienna, Dorotheum, 8th–9th November 1938, lot 227 (in the sale of 9th Novem-ber). It was unsold and sent for sale again at the Dorotheum, 20th May 1940, lot 75(the purchaser is unknown). The sale catalogue’s entry (Aus den Depots des Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Vienna 1938, p.23, no.227) describes an inscription onthe back of the work which refers to Paris Bordone.12 G. Ammann: ‘“. . . die Gemälde nach Übernahme vorteilhaft aufzuhängen, der Provenienz nach deutlich zu machen und für Conservierung zu sorgen . . .”. Die Legate JosefTschaeger, Johann Wieser, Ludwig von Wieser, Leander Rigel, Caspar Jele und BernhardHöfel – Zur Geschichte der Niederländer-Sammlung’, Veröffentlichungen des Tiroler Landesmuseums Ferdinandeum 85 (2005), p.19, no.29. I thank Rüdiger Hoyer of theZentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, for having kindly sent me a copy of thisarticle. 13 Ibid., p.19, no.40. This portrait (whose whereabouts is now unknown) would presumably have had an identifying inscription, although we do not know for

certain. In the inventory of 1626 of Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza an ‘Agostino Barbarigo Proveditore copia di Paolo da Verona’ is listed and, immediately below, a ‘Pietro Barbarigo’, and slightly lower, ‘Un’altro ritratto di Pietro Barbarigo di mano del Tintoretto vecchio’; see J.-C. Rössler: ‘Precisazioni su palazzo Barbarigo a San Polo e lasua collezione di quadri’, Arte veneta 64 (2007), p.241. On Titian and the Barbarigocollection, see I. Artemieva: ‘La collezione Barbarigo’, in L. Puppi, ed.: exh. cat.Tiziano: l’ultimo atto, Belluno (Palazzo Crepadona) 2007, pp.43–47.14 On Pietro Barbarigo, see A. Ventura: ‘Barbarigo, Pietro’, DBI, VI, Rome 1964,pp.78–79. Another portrait may have belonged to the same series of Barbarigo portraits(it has similar dimensions – 113 by 106 cm. – compared with that of Agostino Barbarigo, which measures 118 by 97 cm.); it went for sale in Florence, Semenzato,26th May 2004, lot 198. The catalogue gives the inscription: ‘Nicolaus Barbadicus / Legatusad Regem Trac / um eloquentia ac doc / trina perspicuus vita / functus est Constant / eneapolisanno: MDLXVII’. This Niccolò Barbarigo must be the one who was nominated Balioat Costantinople in 1577 (thus the date that appears on the portrait must be out by adecade); see F. Babinger: ‘Barbarigo, Niccolò’, DBI, VI, Rome 1964, pp.76–78.15 See S. Colla, L. Losa and M. Muraro: La villa Barbarigo di Noventa Vicentina: Il territorio, la villa, gli affreschi, Noventa Vicentina 1984. A series of posthumous portraitsof members of the Barbarigo family of the same celebratory type are in the picturegallery of the Castello Sforzesco, Milan; see A. Loda, in Museo d’Arte Antica del CastelloSforzesco: Pinacoteca, III, Milan 1999, pp.361–63, nos.764–66.

the burlington magazine • cliv • january 2012 13

T I T I AN ’ S ‘ G ENT I L UOMO D A C A ’ B AR BAR I GO ’

16. Portrait of Agostino Barbarigo,by an anonymousartist. First half ofthe seventeenthcentury? Canvas,118 by 97 cm.(Private collection).


collection at the start of the seventeenth century and consideredan iconographic model of a dead relation. So in all probability the portrait represents a member of the Barbarigo family, andeverything suggests that he can be identified with the ‘gentiluomoda Ca’ Barbarigo’ described by Vasari.But who exactly is he? Tagliaferro considered the possibility

that it is Bernardo (1463–1518), son of the Doge Marco(1413–86), a brilliant politician and a high-ranking magistrateand administrator of the Republic’s finances in 1509.16 But thissuggestion seems impossible, because if we take the dating of the portrait to be around 1508–09, Bernardo would have beenslightly over forty-five years old, which is not the age of the sitter, who seems considerably younger. His face is fully formed and bearded, and his self-confident expression is that of amature yet still young man of about thirty years old.17At that date the thirty-year-old Gerolamo di Andrea Barbarigo

was about to take his first steps in politics: on 1st August 1509 hewas one of the Heads of the Forty (with Andrea Loredan, whowas soon to become one of the Heads of the Council of Ten),while in October 1509 he was elected as one of the magistratesresponsible for navigation (Savio agli Ordini), for which it was

necessary to be at least thirty years old.18 He was the eldest of the ten children of Andrea Barbarigo, who in his turn had beenthe eldest of Doge Marco’s children (and the brother of theabove-mentioned Bernardo). In 1479 Andrea married PaolinaVitturi and he died in an accident in 1499 when the family’s financial circumstances were somewhat strained, although theyrecovered thanks to the intervention of their uncle AgostinoBarbarigo, who had succeeded his brother Marco as Doge.Gerolamo had a particularly brilliant public career. At the timeof his death, on 15th August 1531, Marin Sanudo remarked that‘he would have been even greater had God granted him a longlife’. In 1529 Pietro Bembo advised his nephew Giovan Matteoto get help from ‘Magnifico M. Ieronimo Barbarigo, who was

16 Tagliaferro, op. cit. (note 7), p.124. On Bernardo Barbarigo, see A. Ventura: ‘Barbarigo, Bernardo’, DBI, VI, Rome 1964, pp.59–61. Bernardo Barbarigo wasinvolved in the reconstruction of the Fondaco because he was a member of the DieciSavi for the taxation of Venice and governor of the Entrate in 1509. Tagliaferro alsonames Francesco Barbarigo, who on 10th March 1505 was one of the counsellors ofthe illustrissima signoria in imposing a tax on the Proveditori al Sal regarding the reconstruction of the Fondaco, recently devastated by fire; see H. Simonsfeld: Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig und die deutsch–venetianischen Handelsbeziehungen:Quellen und Forschungen, Stuttgart 1887, pp.346–47, no.631. In the Duveen archivesat the Getty Institute (Duveen Brothers Records, Series II.A. Artists’ files regardingworks of art, 1904–62 ca., box 293, folder 16, ‘Titian: “Gentleman in outfit”, ex Benson Collection, c.1947–1960’) there is a file on the Portrait of the man in black bel -ieved to be a youthful work of Titian’s, formerly in the Benson collection (NortonSimon Museum, Pasadena), with extensive notes by Maurice W. Brockwell on theBarbarigo family. Brockwell concluded that the ex-Benson portrait was of Andrea diNiccolò di Andrea Barbarigo, who was appointed Lord of the Arsenal on 23rd May1512. I have not seen the portrait, but doubt that it is really an early work of Titian’s,on the level of the painting in the National Gallery. My attention was drawn to theDuveen material by R. Lauber: ‘Barbarigo “dalla Terrazza” collezione’, in L. Boreanand S. Mason, eds.: Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia: Il Settecento, Venice 2010, p.246.17 This in itself precludes the identification of the sitter as Titian himself; see note 6above.

18 On Gerolamo Barbarigo, see A. Ventura: ‘Barbarigo, Girolamo’, DBI, VI,Rome 1964, pp.67–68; and G. Priuli: Pretiosi frutti del Maggior Consiglio della Sere-nissima Republica di Venezia, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Cod. Cicogna3781, fol.27. For Gerolamo’s branch of the family see M. Barbaro: Arbori de’ patritiiveneti, I, fol.172, Albero A, Venice, Archivio di Stato, Misc. Codici, s. I, Storiaveneta, nos.17–23; and G.A. Cappellari: Il Campidoglio veneto, Venice, BibliotecaNazionale Marciana MSS, It. VII, 15–18 (=8304–8307), I, fol.94v, Albero C. Forthis branch of the family and on Gerolamo in particular, see G. Padoan: Momentidel Rinascimento veneto, Padua 1978, pp.325–26, note 132. He does not seem to bementioned in the Diarii of Gerolamo Priuli (who was his second cousin and contemporary: Priuli’s maternal grandfather was Gerolamo Barbarigo, brother ofthe Doge Marco). On Priuli, whose portrait appears in the Bellini school Supper atEmmaus (S. Salvador, Venice), see E. Merkel: La Cena in Emmaus di San Salvador,Milan 1999; and J. Fletcher and R.C. Mueller: ‘Bellini and the bankers: the Priulialtarpiece for S. Michele in Isola, Venice’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 147 (2005),pp.5–15. Gerolamo di Andrea Barbarigo should not be confused with other contemporary members of the family with the same name: Gerolamo di FrancescoBarbarigo, merchant for the Priuli who died in February 1500 (his widow, CeciliaPriuli, married in February 1505 Marin Sanudo; M. Sanudo: Diarii, VI, Venice1881, p.132); Gerolamo di Antonio Barbarigo, ‘sopracomito e capitano di galere’in 1505 (ibid., VI, pp.355 and 357); Gerolamo di Antonio di Gerolamo Barbarigo,elected Primicenio of S. Marco on 25th August 1501 (ibid., IV, Venice 1880, p.104)



17. Detail from the predella of Fig.18 showing Gerolamo Barbarigo. Panel, c.30 by40 cm. 18. St Benedict

enthroned with StsJerome and Louis of Toulose (the St Benedict altar -piece), by AndreaPrevitali. 1524.Panel transferredto canvas, c.340 by 200 cm.overall. (BergamoCathedral).


the Doge’s grandson’, assuring him that he was a ‘gentilissimoGentil uomo’ and that he ‘will do good work’.19Gerolamo also belonged to the Veneto’s humanist circles. He

was almost certainly the Gerolamo Barbarigo who belonged tothe ‘young students of the arts from patrician Venetian families’(‘Giovini scolari delle arti Patrizi Veneti’) who, at Padua on 13th June1498, were listed as candidates for doctorates in the arts (‘Dotto-rato in Artibus’).20 Among the other candidates to be elected as‘learned in the arts’, almost all contemporaries, born around1480, were Vincenzo Querini and Tommaso Giustiniani (bothmembers, with Pietro Bembo, of the famous ‘Compagnia degliAmici’), Alvise Bembo (father of Giovan Matteo) as well as Cristoforo Marcello (who was named as an apostolic protonotaryby Julius II in 1507–08).21 Gerolamo belonged to the generationinvolved in the radical revival of literature, politics, theology and above all the arts in the Veneto.22 It was in these years that Giorgione emerged and in which Bembo’s bestseller, theAsolani, was pub lished by Aldo Manuzio in 1505.23So far Gerolamo would seem to correspond well to the identi -

kit of the sitter in the London portrait. However, unfortunatelyno independent portrait of him is known. We can follow himaround the Venetian terraferma, where he acted as governor forvarious cities under Venetian control. He was podestà, or Prefect,of Feltre from 1513 to 1514, at the uneasy time of the War of theLeague of Cambrai. The only tangible trace of him at this time isa beautiful stone dated 1513 erected in his honour, now walledinto the southern façade of the Palazzo Pretorio.24 Between 1519and 1520 he served as podestà at Chioggia, and at Bergamo from1521 to 1524. In Bergamo he commissioned Andrea Previtali topaint an altarpiece for the chapel of St Benedict in the Cathe-dral.25 Previtali had finished it by 17th June 1524, because on thatday there was a dispute between the painter and the communeregarding his payment. Lorenzo Lotto and Antonio Boselli weresummoned to value the work, and assessed it respectively at 94and 90 ducats; it was settled at 92 ducats. Previtali’s altarpiece(Fig.18) shows St Benedict enthroned between Sts Jerome (for-merly thought to be St Bonaventure) and Louis of Toulouse.26The chapel of St Benedict was erected just after 1341, followingthe absolution from the interdict imposed on Bergamo by PopeBenedict XII. On 15th April 1520 Bergamo was placed under anew papal interdict by Leo X, because of diplomatic blundersmade by an important local family, the Passi. On 14th December

of the same year, chiefly thanks to the intervention of LudovicoPassi, the city was granted a papal absolution; the new altarpiecein St Benedict was one of the consequences of that absolution.The three predella panels illustrate these events: the central scene refers both to the fourteenth-century Pope Benedict XIIpardoning the Bergamasque ambassadors and the more recentabsolution. In the left-hand panel, beneath St Jerome, GerolamoBarbarigo kneels, cap in hand, as the patron of the altarpiece(Fig.17). At this date he was slightly over forty years old, morethan ten years older than in the London portrait. While this is not definite proof, and although the predella is far smaller inscale, his appearance, in terms of the profile, hair and beard, isvery similar and would seem to reinforce the identification of the‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ as Gerolamo.27Another painting could have a ‘family link’ with the London

portrait: the Portrait of a man in the collection of the Duke ofNorthumberland at Alnwick Castle (Fig.19). Nicholas Pennynoted that this rather neglected portrait ‘looks like Titian’s work’

and then apostolic protonotary (ibid., X, Venice 1883, p.16); or Gerolamo di Benedetto Barbarigo, member of the Dieci Savi in July 1508 (ibid., VII, Venice1882, p.575).19 P. Bembo: Lettere: vol. III (1529–1536), ed. E. Travi, Bologna 1992, p.50, no.979.20 B. Nardi: Saggi sulla cultura veneta del Quattro e Cinquecento, ed. P. Mazzantini,Padua 1971, p.40, note 3. This is known thanks to a collection of Paduan documentscompiled by the abbot Dorighello in the late eighteenth century (Padua, Bibl. Civica, MS B. P. 938), ibid., p.40.21 On the ‘Compagnia degli Amici’, see P. Bembo: Prose e rime, ed. C. Dionisotti,Turin 1966, pp.699–703; and A. Ballarin: ‘Giorgione e la Compagnia degli Amici:il “Doppio ritratto” Ludovisi’, Storia dell’arte italiana, V, Turin 1983, pp.479–541(who corrects the mistaken inclusion of Tommaso Giustiniani in the ‘Compagnia’,it was in fact Trifone Gabriele). On Vincenzo Querini, see S.D. Bowd: Reform before the Reformation: Vincenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy, Leiden,Boston and Cologne 2002, esp. pp.32–45. On Cristoforo Marcello, see M. Palumbo: ‘Marcello, Cristoforo’, DBI, LXIX, Rome 2007, pp.525–28. MarcantonioMichiel described a portrait of Cristoforo Marcello by Titian; see G. Frizzoni, ed.:Notizia d’opere di disegno pubblicata e illustrata da D. Jacopo Morelli, Bologna 1884,p.170.22 See G. Romano: ‘Verso la maniera moderna; da Mantegna a Raffaello’, Storia dell’arte italiana, VI.1, Turin 1981, pp.4–85.23 Gerolamo was also responsible for the publication of Marcello Filosseno’s Sylve in

1507, which included two dedications, one to Lucrezia Borgia written by Gerolamoand another addressed to Gerolamo by Filosseno; M. Filosseno: Sylve de Marcello Philoxeno tarvisino poeta clarissimo, Venice 1507. It is a curious coincidence that the firstact of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia (based on Victor Hugo’s play) takesplace on the terrace of Palazzo Barbarigo in Venice.24 On the stone, which also is inscribed with a celebratory epigraph, see P. Rugo:Riflessi storici del dominio e della caduta della Repubblica veneta nelle lapidi della cittadella diFeltre, Feltre 1998, pp.148–49, no.137.25 A. Pinetti: ‘Per la storia della pittura bergamasca nel Cinquecento: spigolature d’archivio’, Bollettino della Civica Biblioteca di Bergamo 2 (1908), pp.234–35.26 Carlotta Quagliarini has convincingly explained the presence of the various saints;see C. Quagliarini: ‘Andrea Previtali tra celebrazione cittadina e cultura religiosa: lepale del Duomo e delle chiese di Sant’Andrea e Sant’Alessandro della Croce a Bergamo’, unpublished M.A. diss. (Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza,1991–92), pp.27–111.27 The small Portrait of Marco Barbarigo by a follower of Jan van Eyck in the NationalGallery, executed c.1449–50 when the sitter was in London, shows the future Doge aged about thirty, a little before the birth of his firstborn, Andrea, the father ofGerolamo. If the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ is really Gerolamo, the National Gallery possesses portraits of grandfather and grandson separated by about sixty years.On the portrait of Marco, see L. Campbell: National Gallery Catalogues: The FifteenthCentury Netherlandish Paintings, London 1998, pp.224–27.



19. Portrait of a man,possibly amember ofthe Barbar - igo family,by Titian.c.1512–14.Canvas, 82.6by 64.8 cm.(Collectionof the Duke ofNorthum-berland,AlnwickCastle).


and that it ‘seems to represent the same sitter as the National Gal-lery’s portrait’.28 Although there are some discrepancies betweenthe two sitters – blue eyes in the London portrait; brown in theone at Alnwick, and different mouths – the two men would seemto share a family likeness. And while Penny’s suggestion was basedpurely on their physical similarities, it is worth noting that whenthe Alnwick painting was in the Camuccini collection in 1851,Tito Barberi, who compiled the catalogue of that collection,linked the portrait to Vasari’s remarks about the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’Barbarigo’.29 When the portrait reached Alnwick some years later,it was known as the ‘portrait of a Barbarigo’. The presence in bothworks of a sleeve of silvered bluish satin – the only two of this typeto appear in a male portrait of Titian’s – leads one to suppose thatthere may have been a link between the two commissions.30

Moreover, the paintings have almost identical dimensions.31Could the Alnwick portrait also be of a Barbarigo, perhaps one ofGerolamo’s many younger brothers? Stylistically it seems to methat the Alnwick portrait dates from some years after that in London; although less audacious compositionally, it is represen-tative of a time when Titian, after painting the frescos in Padua,classicised his forms and created his own canon of portraiture. The fiery landscape is typical of Titian’s brief but intense Giorgionesque period, while the face is wonderfully lit with shaftsof coloured light to create an almost pastel effect. It is very closeto the Portrait of a man (collection of the Earl of Halifax) or the Portrait of a man with a red cap (Frick Collection, New York). Now we should turn to the question of the London portrait’s

chronology. According to Vasari, Titian painted this portraitwhen he was not more than eighteen years old (probably one ofthe chief reasons that Vasari’s account has not been acceptedsince Titian was considered to be too young to create such amasterpiece) and subsequently worked on the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi after Giorgione had finished painting themain façade, which was in December 1508.32 Ludovico Dolcewrote that Titian worked on the Fondaco ‘when he was still nottwenty’.33 This statement is generally considered to be reliableand also fundamental for establishing Titian’s probable date ofbirth. Various factors – including the fact that it would have beendifficult to paint in fresco on an external wall in winter – suggestthat Titian must have worked there in the summer of 1509.34If one follows Vasari, then the portrait of the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’

28 N. Penny in D. Jaffé, ed.: exh. cat. Titian, London (National Gallery) 2003, p.82,no.5, fig.43. Despite its high quality, emphasised by R. Pallucchini: Tiziano, I, Florence 1969, pp.242–43, no.75, this portrait has had difficulties entering the Titianœuvre, although it is included in P. Humfrey: Titian: The Complete Paintings, Ghent2007, p.47, no.14; for its critical history see P. Rylands: Palma Vecchio, Cambridge1988, p.257, no.A1.29 T. Barberi: ‘Catalogo ragionato della Galleria Camuccini in Roma’, c.1851, no.15 (MS in Alnwick Castle Archives; another copy is with the descendants of theCamuccini family at Cantalupo). On the Camuccini collection and its sale, see N. Penny: ‘Raphael’s “Madonna dei garofani” rediscovered’, THE BURLINGTON

MAGAZINE 84 (1992), pp.76–80; L. Finocchi Ghersi: ‘“Il moccolo che va avanti, falume per due”. Pio IX, il marchese Campana e la vendita della collezione Camuccini’,Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, III ser., 25 (2002),pp.355–79. The Alnwick portrait, like many other of the Camuccini paintings, hasan Aldobrandini provenance, and probably came from the Este collections. 30 Many of the men portrayed by Titian early in his career have similar physiognomies,and almost all of them have beards, from the Portrait of a man in black of c.1507 (National Gallery of Art, Washington), to Domenico Balbi in the Sacra conversazioneof c.1512–14 (Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo). Many

members of the Barbarigo family portrayed in the sixteenth century have beards, andthe family coat of arms includes stylised beards, a pun on their name.31 The National Gallery painting measures 84.6 by 69.5 cm., but the original paintedsurface measures 81.2 by 66.3 cm.; the Alnwick portrait measures 82.6 by 64.8 cm. 32 In December 1508 an arbitration panel of three painters (Lazzaro Bastiani, Vittore Carpaccio and Vittore Belliniano), nominated by Giovanni Bellini, was askedto value Giorgione’s frescos, which had already been finished; see M. Barausse: ‘Giovanni Bellini. I documenti’, in M. Lucco and G.C.F. Villa, eds.: exh. cat. Giovanni Bellini, Rome (Scuderie dell’Quirinale) 2008, p.355, no.108.33 L. Dolce: ‘Dialogo della Pittura: Intitolato l’Aretino’, in P. Barocchi, ed.: Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento: Fra Manierismo e Controriforma: Volume primo:Varchi–Pino–Dolce–Danti–Sorte, Bari 1960, p.201.34 P. Joannides: Titian to 1518, New Haven and London 2001, p.68.35 Vasari, op. cit. (note 1), p.156; on Titian’s Flight into Egypt, see the article by IrinaArtemieva on pp.4–11 above.36 To this category of portraits belong the ‘ritratto in maestà’, according to MarcantonioMichiel’s definition of Raphael’s portrait of Pietro Bembo, which Michiel saw in Bembo’s collection; he probably used the term ‘in maestà’, to mean full face (asexplained in Dolce, op. cit. (note 33), p.179; see also the definition in Battaglia, op. cit.



21. Detail ofthe Miracle ofthe speakingbabe, byTitian.1510–11.Fresco.(Scuola delSanto,Padua).

20. Salome, by Sebastiano del Piombo. 1510. Panel, 54.9 by 44.5 cm. (National Gallery, London).


Barbarigo’ must have been painted slightly before the frescos,given that Titian, who was still extremely young, only got thecommission thanks to the intervention of Barbarigo. Vasari alsowrites that after the Fondaco, Titian ‘painted a large paintingwith life-size figures’ of the Flight into Egypt (‘la Nostra Donna che va in Egitto’), now in the Hermitage, which was probablycommissioned by Andrea Loredan for his new palace on theGrand Canal, but which must have been painted before the Fondaco frescos.35 Given Vasari’s chronological error, we cannotbelieve blindly in his sequence for Titian’s youthful works. Weneed to determine whether it is plausible that Titian could haveinvented a radically new form of portrait when he was not yettwenty, slightly before 1510, by comparing it with documentedworks of the same period. Compositionally, the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ belongs to

the ‘looking over the shoulder’ portrait type popular in Venicesince c.1500 – for example, Giorgione’s Portrait of Francesco Mariadella Rovere (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) – even if ittakes the pose to an extreme, emphasising the twist of the neckand the torso. The parapet cuts the sitter at the waist, unlike the Bellini tradition of showing only the bust, as, for example, inGiorgione’s Giustiniani portrait (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), oftencompared with the painting in the National Gallery, and some-times even considered to be by the young Titian. There are alsoseveral elements, such as the enlargement of the visual field andthe lowering of the parapet, to emphasise the volume of the torsoand arms (often in voluminous sleeves), which create such a masterly sensation of space, and above all the Olympian calm andself-confidence expressed by the sitter’s expression and gesture,which link it to the kind of monumental portrait born in thoseyears.36 To this genre belong, for example, Raphael’s portraitsfrom his Florentine years (those of Agnolo and Maddalena Doniin the Uffizi, Florence) and at Urbino (the so-called Portrait ofFrancesco Maria I della Rovere, also at the Uffizi). In the Londonportrait Titian fused the ‘looking over the shoulder’ format andthe monumental portrait, anticipating by some years Raphael,who experimented with it in, for example, the Man in fur(formerly in the Czartorysky Museum, Cracow).37 There weremany ways that these new compositional ideas could have beentransmitted. Pietro Bembo was at the court of Urbino from 1506,and Fra Bartolomeo was in Venice in spring 1508.38 The youngTitian’s wish to formulate something radically new, which brokeall ties with the past, was probably stimulated by a person (Vasari

says ‘his friend’) who was demanding, of sufficient social standingand au fait with current trends as, it would seem, was GerolamoBarbarigo. Carlo Dionisotti wrote that ‘at the start of the cinquecento, in Venice, a young unknown painter, as Titian wasat that time, was encouraged by his environment, his patrons andclients to produce works in a completely new style’.39The first fully documented works of Titian’s are the frescos

with Stories of St Anthony of Padua painted between the end of1510 and 1511 for the Scuola del Santo in Padua in which hisstyle reached a classical perfection. In the Miracle of the speakingbabe the group of women on the right (Fig.21) have a mon -umental physical presence and there is a total conquest of thedepiction of space that is similar to the London portrait, whichwould seem, however, to have been painted earlier – just as it is this writer’s conviction that it was painted earlier than the‘Schiavona’, also in the National Gallery, one of the most mag -nificent examples of the full-face portraits (‘ritratto in maestà’), and exactly contemporary with the Paduan frescos. The closecompositional parallels between the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’and Sebastiano del Piombo’s Salome (Fig.20), also in the NationalGallery, dated 1510, are also intriguing. It was a moment whenSebastiano seems to have fallen under the influence of the youngTitian: 1510 can therefore be taken as a terminus ante quem for theBarbarigo portrait. It does not seem impossible that in 1509Titian was able to paint such a portrait: his Christ carrying the crossat S. Rocco was most probably painted in this year (Fig.22).40The attribution of this painting is still under discussion despite

(note 5), IX, p.404) from the waist up and with a monumental effect: ‘el retratto piccolo de esso M. Pietro Bembo, allora che giovinetto stava in corte del duca d’Urbino fu de mano de Raffael d’Urbin in m[aest]ta’; Frizzoni, op. cit. (note 21), p.46. The term ‘maestà’ was already used early in the fourteenth century to indicate a sacred imageshown frontally; see G. Agosti: ‘Il più antico ricordo lombardo di Giotto’, in C. AcidiniLuchinat, ed.: Settanta studiosi italiani: Scritti per l’Istituto Germanico di Storia dell’Arte diFirenze, Florence 1997, p.44.37 See R. Jones and N. Penny: Raphael, New Haven and London 1983, pp.170–71,fig.180. Before taking on the monumental portrait format, Titian had experimentedwith the ‘looking over the shoulder’ format; from the Portrait of a man (Ickworth, National Trust), called the ‘Gentleman with Flashing Eyes’ by E. Wethey: The Paintings of Titian: II: The Portraits, London 1971, p.104, no.41, to the Altman Portrait of a man (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which comes from the height of his Giorgionesque phase just before the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’. A similar silksleeve is worn by the man on the left of the Lovers (Royal Collection), a ruined picture but certainly by Titian of the same date as the National Gallery portrait.38 It is possible that Bembo had some influence on Titian’s youthful portraits, and on the creation of the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’: in the dialogue De Guido UbaldoFeretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzagia Urbini ducibus liber, written between 1509 and 1510,

Bembo makes Beroaldo say that a portrait needs to contain the ‘mores animi’ to expressthe ‘consuetudo animi’ of the person portrayed; see B. Agosti: ‘Intorno alla “Vita” Gioviana di Raffaello’, Prospettiva 110–11 (2003), pp.58–60. That there were links between Bembo in his Urbino years and Titian are proven by Titian’s Tobiasand the angel (Accademia, Venice), on which the Bembo coat of arms appears; it is notimprobable that Pietro Bembo commissioned it; it is plausibly dated c.1508; see J.Wilde: Venetian Art from Bellini to Titian, Oxford 1974, pp.109–12. For Fra Bartolomeoin Venice, see P. Humfrey: ‘Fra Bartolommeo in Venice and St Catherine of Siena’,THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 132 (1990), pp.476–83.39 C. Dionisotti: ‘Tiziano e la letteratura’, in idem: Appunti su arti e lettere, Milan 1995,p.119.40 J. Anderson: ‘“Christ carrying the Cross” in San Rocco: its commission and miraculous history’, Arte veneta 31 (1977), pp.186–88. For a different interpretation ofthe documents and the origin of the painting, see M.A. Chiari Moretto Wiel: ‘Il Cristo portacroce della Scuola di San Rocco e la sua lunetta’, Atti dell’Istituto Venetodi Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 156 (1997–98), pp.687–732. In Van Dyck’s travel sketchbookin the British Museum is a drawing of the Christ carrying the cross; see G. Adriani: AntonVan Dyck: Italienisches Skizzenbuch, Vienna 1965, pp.15–16, no.20v, where the facestrangely recalls Giorgione’s lost Orpheus.



22. Christcarrying thecross (beforerestoration),by Titian.c.1508–09.Canvas,68.2 by 88cm. (ScuolaGrande diS. Rocco,Venice).


the fact that it is a wreck. In the present writer’s opinion it is (orwas) certainly by Titian, and Christ’s face, with its poignantexpression, appears similar to the face in the Barbarigo portrait,almost as if Titian had in his mind the face of ‘his friend’ whichhe had studied so long for the portrait. It was at this time that Giorgione also arrived at similar

compositional solutions, although with wildly different results. Itis to be hoped that one day his painting of Orpheus will reappear;it is known only through an engraving by Lucas Vorstermanmade after a copy of the original by David Teniers the Younger(Fig.23) for the Theatrum Pictorium. Giorgione had conceived of something similar to Titian’s portrait with Orpheus’s great billowing sleeve in the foreground. But in contrast to the calmself-confidence of Titian’s figure, Giorgione’s poet, his cappushed to the back of his head, sings a desperate, heartbreakingsong, rather like those of the Singers in the Galleria Borghese andin the Mattioli collection.41 Titian, thanks to his apparent self-

confidence and the grandeur with which he invested his portraits, had already become the favourite of the Venetian patriciate, while Giorgione, in the last months of his life, evidently followed a dramatically different artistic path whichhad probably distanced him from the more high-flown tastes ofthe great Venetian patrons.42 The recent discovery of the postmortem inventory of his possessions revealed his indigent state: hedied a poor man.43The myth that the Barbarigo portrait represented Ludovico

Ariosto was born in Amsterdam around 1640.44 At that date thework was in the collection of Alfonso Lopez, who also ownedRaphael’s portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione (Musée du Louvre,Paris). Similar both in dimensions and in composition, they cameto be regarded as pendants: in fact they formed a perfect quartetAriosto–Titian/Castiglione–Raphael. Once Titian’s portrait hadbeen immortalised as ‘Ariosto’ in Reinier van Persyn’s engravingand then in Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie, the deedwas done. It is well known that Rembrandt was inspired by thetwo portraits in his etched self-portrait of 1639 and in his paintedSelf-portrait of 1640 (National Gallery, London).45Another great portrait painter and admirer of Titian’s who

exploited some of the qualities of the ‘Ariosto’ was Anthony vanDyck; in his Self-portrait (Fig.24), datable around 1640, he wouldseem to have been inspired by Titian, not only in the ‘lookingover the shoulder’ format, but also in the use of light and shadeon the face.46 Van Dyck can be credited with having beenresponsible for the enormous diffusion of this kind of portrait inEngland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, givingrise to many sore necks, at the expense of, among others, SamuelPepys: ‘I sit to have it full of shadows and do almost break myneck looking over my shoulders to make the posture for him to work by’.47 We know from the correspondence betweenClaude Vignon and François Langlois in November 1641 thatVan Dyck, who already owned many wonderful paintings byTitian, was interested in buying the ‘ritratto dell’Ariosto molto eccellentissimo’, which was sent for sale in Paris in mid-Decembertogether with the rest of Lopez’s collection.48 On 9th DecemberVan Dyck died, a few days before the Lopez sale. Given that apainting of ‘Ariosto Poeta’ by Titian is listed in an inventory ofhis collection in 1644, it would seem likely that Van Dyck hadarranged to buy the painting on one of the last days of his life,and that when the sale was finalised he may have already beendead for some days.49

41 On Giorgione’s Singers, see A. Ballarin in M. Laclotte and G. Nepi Scirè, eds.: exh. cat. Le siècle de Titien: L’âge d’or de la peinture à Venise, Paris (Grand Palais) 1993,2nd ed., pp.42–44 and 341–46, nos.29–30. Also to be included in this discussion isGiorgione’s Self-portrait as David (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig),one of his last works.42 This may reflect a genuine sense that he was marginalised or less successful thanTitian; see Dolce’s famous anecdote; Dolce, op. cit. (note 33), pp.201–02, repeated by Vasari, op. cit. (note 1), p.157, on Giorgione’s jealousy of the success of Titian’swork on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. 43 R. Segre: ‘A rare document on Giorgione’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 153(2011), pp.383–86.44 For Ariosto’s real iconography, see G. Gronau: ‘Titian’s “Ariosto”’, ibid., 63 (1933), pp.194–203; and R. Ceserani: ‘Studi ariosteschi: I. Dietro i ritratti di Ludovico Ariosto’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 153 (1976), pp.243–95.45 See E.M. Bloch: ‘Rembrandt and the Lopez collection’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 29(1946), pp.175–86; and C. Brown: exh. cat. Second Sight: Titian: Portrait of a Man:Rembrandt: Self-portrait at the age of 34, London (National Gallery) 1980.46 Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 9th December 2009, lot 8; it was exhibited for the first

time in 2009; see K. Hearn, ed.: exh. cat. Van Dyck and Britain, London (Tate Britain) 2009, p.139, no.67. This self-portrait follows that with the sunflower ofc.1633 (collection of the Duke of Westminster), which was already related to Titian’sportrait by Gould, op. cit. (note 4), pp.281–82, note 6.47 Pepys is speaking of his portrait painted by John Hayls in 1666 (National PortraitGallery, London); see D. Piper: Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the NationalPortrait Gallery: 1625–1714, Cambridge 1963, pp.269–70. My thanks to NormanCoady for having alerted me to this anecdote.48 C. Hofstede de Groot: Die Urkunden über Rembrandt (1575–1721), The Hague 1906,pp.116–18, no.90.49 The Lopez sale must have taken place at the same time that Van Dyck died; ibid., p.117. For the inventory of his collection of 1644, see J. Wood: ‘Van Dyck’s“Cabinet de Titien”: the contents and dispersal of his collection’, THE BURLINGTONMAGAZINE 82 (1990), p.695.50 Two copies of this detailed manuscript survive, it was compiled by the painterDouglas Guest; see D. Guest: A Catalogue of Pictures at Cobham Hall [. . .] Made in theYear 1833 (Strood, Medway Archives Office, inv. no.U565.F27). Titian’s portrait isno.7, valued at £400. Nicholas Penny, who generously shared his personal work onthe ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’, also discovered this: see the biographical details of



23. Orpheus,by David

Teniers theYounger, aftera lost paintingby Giorgioneof c.1508–09.c.1670. Can-vas mountedon panel, 16.8by 11.7 cm.

(Private collection).


The painting reappears at the start of the nineteenth century in the collection of John Bligh, 4th Earl of Darnley (1767–1831),at Cobham Hall, Kent. In an inventory of the paintings atCobham Hall of 1833 it appears as ‘Titian. Portrait of Ariosto –very fine – the drapery beautifully painted – brought from France at the beginning of the French Revolution’.50 A few pageslater a painting by Rubens is described: ‘The Triumph of HenryQuatre – a very Masterly Sketch – brought from France with theAriosto at the breaking out of the French Revolution’.51 Thispainting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.The presence of these two works together in a French collectionthat was split up at the end of the eighteenth century allows forthe identification of two similar paintings (almost certainly thesame two) in the collection of Charles-Alexandre de Calonne

(1734–1802), minister of finance under Louis XVI, most of whosecollection was sold in London in two sales in March and April1795.52 In the catalogue of the Calonne sale we find: ‘Titian. ThePortrait of a Venetian Nobleman. This surprizing head may beranked as the most perfect model of portrait painting; it has theappearance of illusion, and seems to possess life and animation’;and also: ‘Rubens. Rome Triumphant – a finished sketch of anemblematic subject, painted with infinite spirit, and coloured inhis best manner’.53 It is not known where Calonne bought theportrait, but it is interesting that Joshua Reynolds, who had linkswith Calonne, in many of his self-portraits (particularly that in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; Fig.25) would seem to havebeen inspired, more than two and a half centuries after it was firstpainted, by Titian’s ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’.54

John Bligh (1767–1831), 4th Earl of Darnley, in N. Penny: National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings: Volume II: Venice 1540–1600, London 2008, pp.448–52. Also in the Medway Archives Office (inv. no.U565.T249)is an inventory with valuations of the Darnley collection in 1895, in which Titian’s‘Portrait of Ariosto’ is in the ‘Large Picture Gallery’ valued at £2,800. Anotherinventory of Cobham Hall, made on John Bligh’s death in 1831, is in London, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Art Library, MSS, MSL/1972/2122, whenTitian’s ‘Ariosto’ was in the ‘Picture Gallery’.51 Rubens’s painting is in the inventory of 1833 (Guest, op. cit. (note 50), no.21),valued at £200, but only at £120 in that of 1896. In the Cobham Hall inventory of1831 it appears immediately after Titian’s ‘Ariosto’.52 Nicholas Penny reached the same conclusion on Calonne from the Darnley inventory. On the Calonne collection, see W. Buchanan: Memoirs of painting, with achronological history of The Importation of Pictures by the Great Masters into England sincethe French Revolution, London 1824, pp.217–56; and B. Scott: ‘Charles Alexandre deCalonne: Economist and Collector’, Apollo 97/131 (1973), pp.86–91. There wereseveral Calonne sales, the relevant ones are: sale, London, Skinner and Dyke,23rd–28th March 1795; and sale, London, Bryan’s Gallery, 27th April 1795, and thefollowing days.

53 The description appears in the second sale catalogue at Bryan’s Gallery, op. cit.(note 52). The two paintings are nos.81 and 113 (respectively priced at £35 and£44.2.0). They also appear in the catalogue of Skinner and Dyke, op. cit. (note 52):the Titian on the second day’s sale of paintings (26th March 1795), no.67, ‘A fine Portrait of a Noble Venetian’, £35, the Rubens was in the fourth day’s sale of paintings (28th March 1795), no.30, ‘Rome Triumphant, an emblematic finishedsketch, full of genius, and finely coloured’, £42.2.0.54 In 1790 Calonne bought from Reynolds Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse(Huntington Library, San Marino CA) for 800 gns. For Reynolds’s self-portraits thatseem to be based on the same composition as the National Gallery Titian, see D.Mannings: Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven andLondon 2000, I, pp.47–51, nos.5–21. The Concert Champêtre in the Louvre has had asimilarly long-lasting influence, see F. Haskell: ‘Giorgione’s “Concert Champêtre”and its Admirers’, in idem: Past and Present in Art and Taste: Selected Essays, New Havenand London 1987, pp.141–53. The Concert Champêtre is today rightly regarded by most scholars as a cornerstone for Titian’s early work and in my opinion can beconsidered in parallel with the Judith/Justice originally above the side entrance of theFondaco (the detached remains of which are now in the Ca’ d’Oro), and thereforealmost contemporary with the Barbarigo portrait.



24. Self-portrait, by Anthony van Dyck. c.1640. Canvas, 59.7 by 47.3 cm. (Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, London).

25. Self-portrait, by Joshua Reynolds. 1775. Panel, 71.5 by 58 cm. (Galleriadegli Uffizi, Florence).


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