Portrait of a Gentleman, three-quarter length, in a fur-trimmed coat, holding a document and leaning against a pedestal

Details

Jacopo Robusti, il Tintoretto (1518/9-1594)
Portrait of a Gentleman, three-quarter length, in a fur-trimmed coat, holding a document and leaning against a pedestal
oil on canvas
39 7/8 x 32 3/8in. (101.3 x 82.4cm.)

Provenance

Queen Christina of Sweden, Palazzo Riario, Rome.
Cardinal Azzolini, her residuary legatee.
His nephew, Marchese Azzolini.
Principe Livio Odescalchi.
Principe Baldassare Odescalchi-Erba; sold on his death in 1721 with the whole of Queen Christina's Collection to Philippe, Duc d'Orléans (le Régent).
Louis, Duc d'Orléans.
Louis-Philippe d'Orléans (Philippe Egalité).
Sold by him to M. Walkuers, a banker from Brussels, 1792.
Sold by him to M. Leborde de Méréville, who bought this and the other Orléans Italian pictures to England.
Sold by him to Jeremiah Harman, who made all the Orléans Italian pictures over to a syndicate consisting of the Duke of Bridgewater and Lords Carlisle and Gower (later Marquess of Stafford); exhibited for sale by private contract at the Lyceum, The Strand, London, for six months but returned by the Duke of Bridgewater.
By inheritance to his great-nephew, Lord Francis Egerton, later 1st Earl of Ellesmere, Bridgewater House, London, from 1798, no. 104; later moved to Mertoun House, St. Boswell's, Scotland.
The Duke of Devonshire; sold by Order of The Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Christie's, 28 Nov. 1975, lot 15 (6,500gns.).

Literature

W. Buchanan, Memoirs of Painting, London, 1824, I, p. 133.
G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London, 1854, II, p. 33, 'With the exception of the face - most powerfully coloured in a reddish brown tone - a mass of black'.
G. Campori, Raccolta di cataloghi e inventarii inediti, Modena, 1870, p. 343.
B. Berenson, The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London, 1894, p. 118.
H. Thode, Tintoretto, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1901, p. 80.
M. Pittaluga, Il Tintoretto, Bologna, 1925, p. 271.
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford, 1932, pp. 178 and 556.
R. Pallucchini, Giunte alla giovinezza del Tintoretto, Arte Veneta, 1951, pp. 112-3.
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School, London, 1957, p. 175.
P.L. de Vecchi, L'opera completa del Tintoretto, Milan, 1970, p. 89, no. 40.
P. Rossi, Jacopo Tintoretto. I ritratti, Venice, 1974, pp. 101-2, fig. 26.

Lot Essay

Berenson considered the present picture an early work (op. cit., 1932, p. 558, and op. cit., 1958, p. 176). Pittaluga concurred with this opinion (op. cit., p. 264), and Pallucchini, loc. cit., related it to a similar portrait in the Louvre, and another at Hampton Court, dated 1545, loc. cit.

Paola Rossi feels that its mixture of mannerist and northern influences establishes it to be of slightly later date, comparable to the Portrait of a Gentleman in the Coelho collection, Rio de Janeiro. She dates both pictures to 1547-8 (Rossi, op. cit., pp. 101-2 and 121, figs. 26 and 28).

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