Day 232 - Two High Renaissance portraits



 January 11, 2021

Gallery 608 (607 is still under renovation) is a large skylit space hung with works by 16th century High Renaissance painters working in Rome, Florence, and Venice. Some of these artists are familiar to me, others not.   My favorite is a work by an artist I didn't know, Francesco Salviati, who was born in Florence in 1510 and died in Rome in 1563. It's a portrait in oil on wood, perhaps 22" X 17", of Carlo Rimbotti, a Florentine physician, who was about 30 years old at the time this likeness was painted in 1548. The subject, dressed in a dark cloak, poses against a dark ground; only his face and his right hand, which holds a small box (medicines?) stand out. But what a face! He looks out with piercing, intelligent eyes, and I cannot look away from his gaze. It's one if the most intense, arresting portraits I've ever seen.


The other picture that stops me in my tracks is a portrait by Titian of Filippo Archinto, a Catholic cleric who fought against heresy (i.e., Protestantism) and who was confirmed as Archbishop of Milan, although he died before assuming that office. In the painting, executed in oil on canvas and about 42" high and 36" wide,  Archinto, well along in years, is shown seated in an armchair, his finger holding his place in a book. I am certainly aware that Titian was a master of brushwork, so perhaps seeing that mastery displayed in this portrait isn't  a "surprise." But I'm blown away by the way Titian used paint to depict the prelate's fine, thinning hair, his rather scraggly  beard, the folds  of his white garment, and the lush texture of his cape (which at first I took to be fur but which the placard tells me is velvet).


I hope visitors don't just walk by the pietra dura table in the center of the gallery without looking at it (as I almost did). It's absolutely magnificent.


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