‘AT THE TIME he first began to paint like Giorgione, when he was no more than eighteen, [Titian] made the portrait of a gentleman of the Barbarigo family, a friend of his, which was held to be extremely fine, for the representation of the flesh-colour was true and realistic and the hairs were so well distinguished one from the other that they might have been counted, as might the stitches in a doublet of silvered satin which also appeared in that work. In short the picture was thought to show great diligence and to be very successful. Titian signed it in the shadow, but if he had not done so, it would have been taken for Giorgione’s work. Meanwhile, after Giorgione himself had executed the principal façade of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, Titian, through Barbarigo’s intervention, was commissioned to paint certain scenes for the same building, above the Merceria’.1

Vasari’s evocative and detailed description, which would seem to be the result of seeing the painting in the flesh, led Jean Paul Richter in 1895 to believe that it could be identified with Titian’s Portrait of a man then in the collection of the Earl of Darnley at Cobham Hall and now in the National Gallery, London (Fig.15).2 Up to that date it was famous as ‘Titian’s Ariosto’, a confusion that, as we shall see, had been born in the seventeenth century. In one respect it looked rather different in Richter’s time and closer to Vasari’s description than it does now. Photographs taken before its restoration in 1949 reveal that there was some repainting which thickened the man’s beard and hair, making it appear – more than it does now – that the hairs were ‘so well distinguished one from the other’.3 Also at that time his name written ‘in the shadow’ was still on the parapet. What now reads as Titian’s initials (‘· T · V ·’) had been overpainted to read ‘TITIANVS · V ·’, with the last ‘V’ superimposed over the original ‘T’ and, to the right, the original ‘V’.4 By ‘in the shadow’ (‘in ombra’), a term that does not occur anywhere else in the Lives, Vasari probably intended to indicate the illusionistic effect given by a signature ‘carved’ on the parapet, which was legible because it ‘cast’ a shadow. It is still possible to see what Vasari describes as ‘the stitches in a doublet of silvered satin’ which dot the ample sleeve (the ‘giubone’) of iridescent satin which can certainly be described as ‘inargentato’, an adjective that does not necessarily imply a silver colour, but merely silvery translucent reflections.5

While initially Richter’s suggestion met with a certain success, in the course of the last century scholars gradually abandoned the theory, frightened by the possibility that such an identification would imply a very early date for the painting. Vasari wrote that Titian painted the portrait when he was ‘no more than eighteen’, and that when Giorgione had finished painting the façade of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, Barbarigo arranged for Titian to paint some scenes on the same building above the Merceria: this would have had to have been around 1508. Today few people believe that the Portrait of a man is the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ described by Vasari.6

Some 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 for its pictorial qualities (which are few) but for the inscription that appears in the top right-hand side, under the Barbarigo coat of arms: ‘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 the National Gallery portrait, combined with Vasari’s precise description, was enough to prove that the sitter was indeed the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’. Yet the inscription on the copy refers to a Barbarigo who cannot possibly be the man painted by Titian: this was the famous Agostino, born in 1516, Prefect of Padua in 1565, who died in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.8 We know what he looked like, for several portraits of him exist, the most 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 of which was that ‘in the absence of the sitter, the portrait of Agostino Barbarigo was copied from a prototype of a relation or ancestor’.10 Tagliaferro accepted the date of 1565 for the work, and attributed it to Titian’s circle. In this article an alternative but complementary solution is proposed.

A cutting from a catalogue in the Paris Bordone files in the Witt Library in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, allows part of the provenance of the Portrait of Agostino Barbarigo to be traced: until 1938 it was in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck, when it was sent for sale in Vienna together with a large part of the Museum’s reserve collection.11 It had arrived at the Ferdinandeum in 1887 with an attribution to Paris Bordone in the bequest of Ludwig von Wieser.12 Among the fifty paintings donated by Von Wieser, there was also a portrait of ‘Generale Pietro Barbarigo’ attributed to Leandro Bassano.13 Pietro Barbarigo (1569–1618) was the son of another Agostino whose identity is not certain, and it would seem likely that his portrait and that of Agostino belonged to a series of commemorative posthumous effigies of the Barbarigo family painted at the start of the seventeenth century.14 For this reason it is not necessary to take 1565 as the date at which the Agostino Barbarigo was painted, only as an important date for the man portrayed. Thus the explanation could be that at the start of the seventeenth century the Barbarigo family commissioned a series of portraits of celebrated members of their house, some dead for many years, similar to that which was commissioned in the same years for the decoration of the villa Barbarigo at Noventa Vicentina.15 Lacking a model for one portrait, it was decided to use the face of the London portrait, which was evidently still in the Barbarigo collection at the start of the seventeenth century and considered an iconographic model of a dead relation. So in all probability the portrait represents a member of the Barbarigo family, and everything suggests that he can be identified with the ‘gentiluomo da 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 magistrate and administrator of the Republic’s finances in 1509.16 But this suggestion seems impossible, because if we take the dating of the portrait to be around 1508–09, Bernardo would have been slightly 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 a mature yet still young man of about thirty years old.17 At that date the thirty-year-old Gerolamo di Andrea Barbarigo was about to take his first steps in politics: on 1st August 1509 he was one of the Heads of the Forty (with Andrea Loredan, who was soon to become one of the Heads of the Council of Ten), while in October 1509 he was elected as one of the magistrates responsible 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 been the eldest of Doge Marco’s children (and the brother of the above-mentioned Bernardo). In 1479 Andrea married Paolina Vitturi and he died in an accident in 1499 when the family’s financial circumstances were somewhat strained, although they recovered thanks to the intervention of their uncle Agostino Barbarigo, who had succeeded his brother Marco as Doge. Gerolamo had a particularly brilliant public career. At the time of his death, on 15th August 1531, Marin Sanudo remarked that ‘he would have been even greater had God granted him a long life’. In 1529 Pietro Bembo advised his nephew Giovan Matteo to get help from ‘Magnifico M. Ieronimo Barbarigo, who was the Doge’s grandson’, assuring him that he was a ‘gentilissimo Gentil uomo’ and that he ‘will do good work’.19

Gerolamo also belonged to the Veneto’s humanist circles. He was almost certainly the Gerolamo Barbarigo who belonged to the ‘young students of the arts from patrician Venetian families’ (‘Giovini scolari delle arti Patrizi Veneti’) who, at Padua on 13th June 1498, were listed as candidates for doctorates in the arts (‘Dottorato in Artibus’).20 Among the other candidates to be elected as ‘learned in the arts’, almost all contemporaries, born around 1480, were Vincenzo Querini and Tommaso Giustiniani (both members, with Pietro Bembo, of the famous ‘Compagnia degli Amici’), Alvise Bembo (father of Giovan Matteo) as well as Cristoforo Marcello (who was named as an apostolic protonotary by Julius II in 1507–08).21 Gerolamo belonged to the generation involved 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, the Asolani, was pub lished by Aldo Manuzio in 1505.23

So 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 him around the Venetian terraferma, where he acted as governor for various cities under Venetian control. He was podestà, or Prefect, of Feltre from 1513 to 1514, at the uneasy time of the War of the League of Cambrai. The only tangible trace of him at this time is a beautiful stone dated 1513 erected in his honour, now walled into the southern façade of the Palazzo Pretorio.24 Between 1519 and 1520 he served as podestà at Chioggia, and at Bergamo from 1521 to 1524. In Bergamo he commissioned Andrea Previtali to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of St Benedict in the Cathedral. 25 Previtali had finished it by 17th June 1524, because on that day there was a dispute between the painter and the commune regarding his payment. Lorenzo Lotto and Antonio Boselli were summoned to value the work, and assessed it respectively at 94 and 90 ducats; it was settled at 92 ducats. Previtali’s altarpiece (Fig.18) shows St Benedict enthroned between Sts Jerome (formerly thought to be St Bonaventure) and Louis of Toulouse.26 The chapel of St Benedict was erected just after 1341, following the absolution from the interdict imposed on Bergamo by Pope Benedict XII. On 15th April 1520 Bergamo was placed under a new papal interdict by Leo X, because of diplomatic blunders made by an important local family, the Passi. On 14th December of the same year, chiefly thanks to the intervention of Ludovico Passi, the city was granted a papal absolution; the new altarpiece in 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 XII pardoning the Bergamasque ambassadors and the more recent absolution. In the left-hand panel, beneath St Jerome, Gerolamo Barbarigo kneels, cap in hand, as the patron of the altarpiece (Fig.17). At this date he was slightly over forty years old, more than ten years older than in the London portrait. While this is not definite proof, and although the predella is far smaller in scale, his appearance, in terms of the profile, hair and beard, is very similar and would seem to reinforce the identification of the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ as Gerolamo.27

Another painting could have a ‘family link’ with the London portrait: the Portrait of a man in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle (Fig.19). Nicholas Penny noted that this rather neglected portrait ‘looks like Titian’s work’ and that it ‘seems to represent the same sitter as the National Gallery’s portrait’.28 Although there are some discrepancies between the two sitters – blue eyes in the London portrait; brown in the one at Alnwick, and different mouths – the two men would seem to share a family likeness. And while Penny’s suggestion was based purely on their physical similarities, it is worth noting that when the 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 both works of a sleeve of silvered bluish satin – the only two of this type to appear in a male portrait of Titian’s – leads one to suppose that there may have been a link between the two commissions.30

Moreover, the paintings have almost identical dimensions.31 Could the Alnwick portrait also be of a Barbarigo, perhaps one of Gerolamo’s many younger brothers? Stylistically it seems to me that the Alnwick portrait dates from some years after that in London; although less audacious compositionally, it is representative 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 shafts of coloured light to create an almost pastel effect. It is very close to 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 portrait when he was not more than eighteen years old (probably one of the chief reasons that Vasari’s account has not been accepted since Titian was considered to be too young to create such a masterpiece) and subsequently worked on the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi after Giorgione had finished painting the main façade, which was in December 1508.32 Ludovico Dolce wrote that Titian worked on the Fondaco ‘when he was still not twenty’.33 This statement is generally considered to be reliable and also fundamental for establishing Titian’s probable date of birth. Various factors – including the fact that it would have been difficult to paint in fresco on an external wall in winter – suggest that Titian must have worked there in the summer of 1509.34 If one follows Vasari, then the portrait of the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ must have been painted slightly before the frescos, given that Titian, who was still extremely young, only got the commission thanks to the intervention of Barbarigo. Vasari also writes that after the Fondaco, Titian ‘painted a large painting with life-size figures’ of the Flight into Egypt (‘la Nostra Donna che va in Egitto’), now in the Hermitage, which was probably commissioned by Andrea Loredan for his new palace on the Grand Canal, but which must have been painted before the Fondaco frescos.35 Given Vasari’s chronological error, we cannot believe blindly in his sequence for Titian’s youthful works. We need to determine whether it is plausible that Titian could have invented a radically new form of portrait when he was not yet twenty, slightly before 1510, by comparing it with documented works of the same period.

Compositionally, the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ belongs to the ‘looking over the shoulder’ portrait type popular in Venice since c.1500 – for example, Giorgione’s Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) – even if it takes the pose to an extreme, emphasising the twist of the neck and the torso. The parapet cuts the sitter at the waist, unlike the Bellini tradition of showing only the bust, as, for example, in Giorgione’s Giustiniani portrait (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), often compared with the painting in the National Gallery, and sometimes even considered to be by the young Titian. There are also several elements, such as the enlargement of the visual field and the lowering of the parapet, to emphasise the volume of the torso and arms (often in voluminous sleeves), which create such a masterly sensation of space, and above all the Olympian calm and self-confidence expressed by the sitter’s expression and gesture, which link it to the kind of monumental portrait born in those years.36 To this genre belong, for example, Raphael’s portraits from his Florentine years (those of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni in the Uffizi, Florence) and at Urbino (the so-called Portrait of Francesco Maria I della Rovere, also at the Uffizi). In the London portrait Titian fused the ‘looking over the shoulder’ format and the 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 were many ways that these new compositional ideas could have been transmitted. Pietro Bembo was at the court of Urbino from 1506, and Fra Bartolomeo was in Venice in spring 1508.38 The young Titian’s wish to formulate something radically new, which broke all ties with the past, was probably stimulated by a person (Vasari says ‘his friend’) who was demanding, of sufficient social standing and au fait with current trends as, it would seem, was Gerolamo Barbarigo. Carlo Dionisotti wrote that ‘at the start of the cinquecento, in Venice, a young unknown painter, as Titian was at that time, was encouraged by his environment, his patrons and clients to produce works in a completely new style’.39

The first fully documented works of Titian’s are the frescos with Stories of St Anthony of Padua painted between the end of 1510 and 1511 for the Scuola del Santo in Padua in which his style reached a classical perfection. In the Miracle of the speaking babe the group of women on the right (Fig.21) have a monumental physical presence and there is a total conquest of the depiction of space that is similar to the London portrait, which would 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 magnificent examples of the full-face portraits (‘ritratto in maestà’), and exactly contemporary with the Paduan frescos. The close compositional parallels between the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ and Sebastiano del Piombo’s Salome (Fig.20), also in the National Gallery, dated 1510, are also intriguing. It was a moment when Sebastiano seems to have fallen under the influence of the young Titian: 1510 can therefore be taken as a terminus ante quem for the Barbarigo portrait. It does not seem impossible that in 1509 Titian was able to paint such a portrait: his Christ carrying the cross at S. Rocco was most probably painted in this year (Fig.22).40 The attribution of this painting is still under discussion despite the fact that it is a wreck. In the present writer’s opinion it is (or was) certainly by Titian, and Christ’s face, with its poignant expression, appears similar to the face in the Barbarigo portrait, almost as if Titian had in his mind the face of ‘his friend’ which he 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. It is to be hoped that one day his painting of Orpheus will reappear; it is known only through an engraving by Lucas Vorsterman made 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 calm self-confidence of Titian’s figure, Giorgione’s poet, his cap pushed to the back of his head, sings a desperate, heartbreaking song, rather like those of the Singers in the Galleria Borghese and in 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 which had probably distanced him from the more high-flown tastes of the great Venetian patrons.42 The recent discovery of the post mortem inventory of his possessions revealed his indigent state: he died a poor man.43

The myth that the Barbarigo portrait represented Ludovico Ariosto was born in Amsterdam around 1640.44 At that date the work was in the collection of Alfonso Lopez, who also owned Raphael’s portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Similar both in dimensions and in composition, they came to be regarded as pendants: in fact they formed a perfect quartet Ariosto–Titian/Castiglione–Raphael. Once Titian’s portrait had been immortalised as ‘Ariosto’ in Reinier van Persyn’s engraving and then in Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie, the deed was done. It is well known that Rembrandt was inspired by the two portraits in his etched self-portrait of 1639 and in his painted Self-portrait of 1640 (National Gallery, London).45 Another great portrait painter and admirer of Titian’s who exploited some of the qualities of the ‘Ariosto’ was Anthony van Dyck; in his Self-portrait (Fig.24), datable around 1640, he would seem to have been inspired by Titian, not only in the ‘looking over the shoulder’ format, but also in the use of light and shade on the face.46 Van Dyck can be credited with having been responsible for the enormous diffusion of this kind of portrait in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, giving rise to many sore necks, at the expense of, among others, Samuel Pepys: ‘I sit to have it full of shadows and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulders to make the posture for him to work by’.47 We know from the correspondence between Claude Vignon and François Langlois in November 1641 that Van Dyck, who already owned many wonderful paintings by Titian, was interested in buying the ‘ritratto dell’Ariosto molto eccellentissimo’, which was sent for sale in Paris in mid-December together with the rest of Lopez’s collection.48 On 9th December Van Dyck died, a few days before the Lopez sale. Given that a painting of ‘Ariosto Poeta’ by Titian is listed in an inventory of his collection in 1644, it would seem likely that Van Dyck had arranged to buy the painting on one of the last days of his life, and that when the sale was finalised he may have already been dead for some days.49

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 at Cobham 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 pages later a painting by Rubens is described: ‘The Triumph of Henry Quatre – a very Masterly Sketch – brought from France with the Ariosto at the breaking out of the French Revolution’.51 This painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The presence of these two works together in a French collection that was split up at the end of the eighteenth century allows for the identification of two similar paintings (almost certainly the same two) in the collection of Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1734–1802), minister of finance under Louis XVI, most of whose collection was sold in London in two sales in March and April 1795.52 In the catalogue of the Calonne sale we find: ‘Titian. The Portrait of a Venetian Nobleman. This surprizing head may be ranked as the most perfect model of portrait painting; it has the appearance of illusion, and seems to possess life and animation’; and also: ‘Rubens. Rome Triumphant – a finished sketch of an emblematic subject, painted with infinite spirit, and coloured in his best manner’.53 It is not known where Calonne bought the portrait, but it is interesting that Joshua Reynolds, who had links with Calonne, in many of his self-portraits (particularly that in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; Fig.25) would seem to have been inspired, more than two and a half centuries after it was first painted, by Titian’s ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’.54

I am very grateful to Giovanni Agosti, Nicholas Penny and Carol Plazzotta for having followed every phase of my research on this work, encouraged me and commented and corrected an earlier draft of this article. My heartfelt thanks also the staff of the library of 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 che diciotto anni, [Tiziano] fece il ritratto d’un gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo, amico suo, che fu tenuto molto bello, essendo la somiglianza della carnagione propria e naturale, e sì ben distinti i capelli l’uno dall’altro che si conterebbono, come anco si farebbono i punti d’un giubone di raso inargentato 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, per mezzo del Barbarigo furono allogate a Tiziano alcune storie che sono nella medesima sopra la Merceria’; G. Vasari: Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 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 BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 6 (1904), pp.136–39.

4 This inscription was still present in 1639, given that it appears in Reinier van Persyn’s engraving after a drawing by Joachim von Sandrart (Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, 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 of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, Edinburgh (National Gallery of 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 that on the surface the red lake has deteriorated, although it is still present in the paint layers immediately below. The sleeve was then striped with long red streaks (still just perceptible in good light conditions), which refine and emphasise the padded effect; see J. Dunkerton and M. Spring: ‘The Technique and Materials of Titian’s Early Paintings in The National Gallery, London’, in S. Janssen, ed.: Titian: Jacopo Pesaro being 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 to Herbert 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: review of 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 sa chi sia’, VeneziAltrove (2005), pp.118–39.

8 A. Stella: ‘Barbarigo, Agostino’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani (hereafter cited as DBI), VI, Rome 1964, pp.50–52.

9 There is a smaller version of this posthumous portrait (probably a study for it) in the 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 November). 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 on the 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 Josef Tschaeger, Johann Wieser, Ludwig von Wieser, Leander Rigel, Caspar Jele und Bernhard Höfel – Zur Geschichte der Niederländer-Sammlung’, Veröffentlichungen des Tiroler Landesmuseums Ferdinandeum 85 (2005), p.19, no.29. I thank Rüdiger Hoyer of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, for having kindly sent me a copy of this article.

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 la sua collezione di quadri’, Arte veneta 64 (2007), p.241. On Titian and the Barbarigo collection, 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 / Legatus ad Regem Trac / um eloquentia ac doc / trina perspicuus vita / functus est Constant / eneapolis anno: MDLXVII’. This Niccolò Barbarigo must be the one who was nominated Balio at Costantinople in 1577 (thus the date that appears on the portrait must be out by a decade); 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 portraits of members of the Barbarigo family of the same celebratory type are in the picture gallery of the Castello Sforzesco, Milan; see A. Loda, in Museo d’Arte Antica del Castello Sforzesco: Pinacoteca, III, Milan 1999, pp.361–63, nos.764–66. 

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 was involved in the reconstruction of the Fondaco because he was a member of the Dieci Savi for the taxation of Venice and governor of the Entrate in 1509. Tagliaferro also names Francesco Barbarigo, who on 10th March 1505 was one of the counsellors of the 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 archives at the Getty Institute (Duveen Brothers Records, Series II.A. Artists’ files regarding works 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 believed to be a youthful work of Titian’s, formerly in the Benson collection (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena), with extensive notes by Maurice W. Brockwell on the Barbarigo family. Brockwell concluded that the ex-Benson portrait was of Andrea di Niccolò di Andrea Barbarigo, who was appointed Lord of the Arsenal on 23rd May 1512. 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 the Duveen material by R. Lauber: ‘Barbarigo “dalla Terrazza” collezione’, in L. Borean and 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 6 above.

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 Serenissima Republica di Venezia, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Cod. Cicogna 3781, fol.27. For Gerolamo’s branch of the family see M. Barbaro: Arbori de’ patritii veneti, I, fol.172, Albero A, Venice, Archivio di Stato, Misc. Codici, s. I, Storia veneta, nos.17–23; and G.A. Cappellari: Il Campidoglio veneto, Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana MSS, It. VII, 15–18 (=8304–8307), I, fol.94v, Albero C. For this branch of the family and on Gerolamo in particular, see G. Padoan: Momenti del Rinascimento veneto, Padua 1978, pp.325–26, note 132. He does not seem to be mentioned in the Diarii of Gerolamo Priuli (who was his second cousin and contemporary: Priuli’s maternal grandfather was Gerolamo Barbarigo, brother of the Doge Marco). On Priuli, whose portrait appears in the Bellini school Supper at Emmaus (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 Priuli altarpiece 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 Francesco Barbarigo, merchant for the Priuli who died in February 1500 (his widow, Cecilia Priuli, married in February 1505 Marin Sanudo; M. Sanudo: Diarii, VI, Venice 1881, 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) 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, Venice 1882, 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 documents compiled 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. Marcantonio Michiel 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 Gerolamo and another addressed to Gerolamo by Filosseno; M. Filosseno: Sylve de Marcello Philoxeno tarvisino poeta clarissimo, Venice 1507. It is a curious coincidence that the first act of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia (based on Victor Hugo’s play) takes place 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 di Feltre, 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: le pale 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 National Gallery, 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 of Gerolamo. 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 Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings, London 1998, pp.224–27. 

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 Titian oeuvre, although it is included in P. Humfrey: Titian: The Complete Paintings, Ghent 2007, p.47, no.14; for its critical history see P. Rylands: Palma Vecchio, Cambridge 1988, 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 the Camuccini 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, fa lume 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, has an 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 conversazione of c.1512–14 (Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo). Many members of the Barbarigo family portrayed in the sixteenth century have beards, and the 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 painted surface 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 asked to 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 Irina Artemieva on pp.4–11 above.

36 To this category of portraits belong the ‘ritratto in maestà’, according to Marcantonio Michiel’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 (as explained in Dolce, op. cit. (note 33), p.179; see also the definition in Battaglia, op. cit. (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 image shown frontally; see G. Agosti: ‘Il più antico ricordo lombardo di Giotto’, in C. Acidini Luchinat, ed.: Settanta studiosi italiani: Scritti per l’Istituto Germanico di Storia dell’Arte di Firenze, 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 experimented with 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 silk sleeve 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 Ubaldo Feretrio 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 express the ‘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 Tobias and the angel (Accademia, Venice), on which the Bembo coat of arms appears; it is not improbable 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 Bartolomeo in 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 of the 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 Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 156 (1997–98), pp.687–732. In Van Dyck’s travel sketchbook in the British Museum is a drawing of the Christ carrying the cross; see G. Adriani: Anton Van Dyck: Italienisches Skizzenbuch, Vienna 1965, pp.15–16, no.20v, where the face strangely recalls Giorgione’s lost Orpheus. 

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 is Giorgione’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 than Titian; 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’s work 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 of c.1633 (collection of the Duke of Westminster), which was already related to Titian’s portrait 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 Portrait Gallery, London); see D. Piper: Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery: 1625–1714, Cambridge 1963, pp.269–70. My thanks to Norman Coady 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 BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 82 (1990), p.695.

50 Two copies of this detailed manuscript survive, it was compiled by the painter Douglas Guest; see D. Guest: A Catalogue of Pictures at Cobham Hall [. . .] Made in the Year 1833 (Strood, Medway Archives Office, inv. no.U565.F27). Titian’s portrait is no.7, valued at £400. Nicholas Penny, who generously shared his personal work on the ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’, also discovered this: see the biographical details of 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. Another inventory 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, when Titian’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 of 1831 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 a chronological history of The Importation of Pictures by the Great Masters into England since the French Revolution, London 1824, pp.217–56; and B. Scott: ‘Charles Alexandre de Calonne: Economist and Collector’, Apollo 97/131 (1973), pp.86–91. There were several 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 the following 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 finished sketch, 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 that seem 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 and London 2000, I, pp.47–51, nos.5–21. The Concert Champêtre in the Louvre has had a similarly 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 Haven and 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 be considered in parallel with the Judith/Justice originally above the side entrance of the Fondaco (the detached remains of which are now in the Ca’ d’Oro), and therefore almost contemporary with the Barbarigo portrait.