Another portrait of a man

Portrait of a man (The Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.og)

The drawing Portrait of a Man held at the Metropolitan Museum – not to be confused with the RV of the same name – is an anonymous work attributed to the Spanish school of the 17th century, although in the 19th century it was considered to have been produced by Velázquez (Coles Gallery, 8: Tapestries and Paintings ..., New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 1895, cat. no. 498.). In the absence of any information about this drawing, apart from its provenance, the identity of the sitter provides perhaps the only means of determining its authorship.

The ‘appearance of truth’ in this drawing has always intrigued me. Who could have drawn it? And who might this Velázquez-like man be? I recently realized that the sitter showed strong similarities to the great Neapolitan sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Indeed, a comparison of the drawing Portrait of a Man with another held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, considered by Rudolph Wittkower to be an original self-portrait of Bernini (The Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford, black and red chalk with traces of white on pale brown paper, 275 × 215 mm, WA1944.132). Note that this self-portrait has a correct chiaroscuro, but another drawing very similar to this, held at Windsor, shows the same inverse chiaroscuro found in the RV, although the identification of the sitter as Bernini is very much open to doubt (The Royal Collection Trust, Portrait of a man, c. 1630, black, red and white chalk on buff paper, 41.0 x 26.7 cm, RCIN 905540).

In my opinion, the drawing at the Met also shows strong similarities to the engraving portrait of Bernini by Ottavio Leoni, suggesting all three sitters (New York, Oxford and engraving by Leoni) are one and the same man (fig. A). Indeed, the sitters have the same shock of hair (inverted in the Ashmolean self-portrait), compatible eyes, the same facial profile (although the sitter appears broader in the drawing Portrait of a Man), and the same characteristic mouth and chin. In the drawing Portrait of Man, the hair, moustache and beard give the impression of having been drawn when the sitter was slightly older than in the Ashmolean self-portrait. A peculiarity of Leoni’s portrait is the short hair that Bernini wore.

Rudolf Wittkower revised the dating of the early self-portraits of Bernini, and considered the first to be the engraved portrait by Ottavi Leoni (it bears the date 1622). Bernini, who was then in his twenty-fourth year, appears in this engraving with a mustache and a small tuft under the lower lip. In the Ashmolean drawing he is without the tuft, and his hair is brushed from right to left. In the drawing Portrait of Man, the sitter has a long tuft. I disagree with Wittkower’s idea that the Ashmolean self-portrait should be dated shortly before Leoni’s portrait; the sitter looks older in the Ashmolean work, and even older in the drawing Portrait of a Man.

If the sitter in the Ashmolean self-portrait is, say four-five years older than the one in Leoni’s engraving, the former work could have been produced by 1626-7. The drawing Portrait of Man could therefore have been made by the end of the 1620’s (note again that the sitter appears broader than in the Ashmolean self-portrait). Thus, it might be dated to 1629-1630, during Velázquez stay in Rome. We must remember that he stayed at the Vatican palace invited by Cardinal Barberini, who had met him in Madrid in 1626 (see Giordano and Salort Pons). It is widely known that Barberini was the main patron of Bernini, who was at the time very busy with the baldachin works in the Vatican. It is very likely that Velázquez and Bernini met in Rome, although no proof of such an encounter has ever been found. However, Pacheco informs us that Velázquez made several drawings of the Michelangelo’s Last Trial (some in color and others in pencil) using the same technique as that seen in the drawing Portrait of a Man (see Pacheco).

Despite the fact that several features in the drawing remind one of those in the RV, such as the hair and beard arrangement (note especially the peculiar long tuft), it does not appear to be the work of Velázquez when compared with the few drawings actually attributed to his hand. Indeed, Giovanni Lanfranco might have had the opportunity to paint Bernini at the end of the 1620’s when he was occupied in the Vatican by the large fresco portraying Saint Peter walking on water. Interestingly, the peculiar wide collar and long tuft that Bernini wears in the drawing can be dated to the end of the 1620’s. Indeed, both these collar and tuft appear in the portrait of Duke Ferdinando Brandano by Ottavio Leoni dated 1628 (note that they do not appear in any of the several hundred earlier portraits by Leoni) and in a self-portrait of Giovanni Lanfranco (note the similarities in the shape and the treatment of the collar, and in the peculiar beard tuft). The portrait may be dated to 1629-1630 since Lanfranco appears wearing the cross of a knight of the Order of Christ, a title bestowed upon him by Pope Urban VIII on 11th October 1628. Curiously, in 1931, when the work reappeared during an exhibition of Spanish Masters in London, Mayer suggested it might have been produced by the Velázquez school or by Pietro Martire Neri.

Something that must be underlined here is that Leoni’s portrait was engraved on the occasion of Bernini being granted the status of cavaliere. The fact that Bernini was a knight and a talented artist must have attracted the attention of Velázquez during his stay in Rome, since he appears to have followed Bernini’s path, both in his social and artistic rise. In the 1650’s, he entered the Order of Santiago, in Spain, and the Accademia de San Luca, in Italy. Thus, I suggest here that there is a link between the RV and the drawing Portrait of a Man. The RV might therefore be seen as a self-portrait in Bernini’s image. Indeed, the pose of the sitter, the similarities in the garments (the Spanish and Italian collars of the time), and, above all, the very Italian long beard tuft (note it is never seen again in portraits of Velázquez) and the hairstyle (note the arrangement and the hairs on the top of the head) all coincide. Velázquez may have painted the RV during his first trip to Italy. Interestingly, Pacheco mentions a self-portrait produced in Rome and painted following the style of the Great Titian (hecho en Roma y pintado con la manera del Gran Ticiano).

The sitters in the RV and the drawing Portrait of a Man are therefore very reminiscent of one another: indeed, in the RV, Velázquez appears to have painted himself in the image of Bernini (fig. B). This supports the idea that his social status always danced around in Velázquez’s head. Alternatively, his time in Rome may have simply led to him to believe in the nobility of artistic genius. The formal recognition of this in Bernini and Lanfranco may have spurred his desire to enter the Order of Santiago since, by 1630, he understood himself to be an artist of comparable stature.

R. Wittkower, ‘Works by Bernini at the Royal Academy’, The Burlington Magazine, 93(575), February 1951, pp. 51-56

S. Giordano and S. Salort Pons, “La legación de Francesco Barberini en España: unos retratos para el Cardenal y un breve pontificio para Diego Velázquez”, Archivo Español de Arte, no. 306, 2004, pp. 159-170.

F. Pacheco, El arte de la pintura, edited by Bonaventura Bassegoda, Madrid: Cátedra, 1990.

Giovanni Lanfranco: un pittore barroco tra Parma, Roma e Napoli, Milano: Electa, 2001, p. 268 and p. 532.