Portrait of an architect, half-length, in a black cape over a white shirt, holding the plan of a church, a building beyond

The attribution for the present portrait and the identity of the sitter are yet to be established. When last sold in these Rooms in 1879 the picture was described as a self-portrait by Bernini, but both the physiognomy of the architect and the pictorial style are unrelated to him. The design for the building, which appears to bear an indistinct signature, also remains a mystery. Deborah Howard of Cambridge University, to whom we are very grateful for her assistance, considers the building to be too small to be much more than a garden pavilion; she notes that the niched central space comes from Francesco di Giorgio and Renaissance houses like the Falconetto's Odeon Cornaro of 1524 at Padua, where the space may depend on the newly excavated Domus Aurea [Golden House] of Nero in Rome. This notion appears to be consistent with a North Italian artist albeit of a later generation; comparison may be made with Pietro Muttoni's Portrait of an Architect, in the Chrysler Museum, Virginia. Dr. Mary Newcombe, to whom we are also grateful, has tentatively proposed an attribution to the Genoese Luciano Borzone.