Jacopo Tintoretto painted this portrait of a young Venetian nobleman around 1548, at the outset of his illustrious career. A prolific portraitist, Tintoretto produced hundreds of likenesses of his sixteenth-century contemporaries. When the present work was included by Frederick Ilchman and Robert Echols in their landmark Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., they noted in the accompanying catalogue that the painting counts among a small “core group” of only about “three dozen portraits of very high quality…in which the entire painting is from the hand of Jacopo.”¹ The fully autograph work exudes confidence, both in the artist’s bravura handling of paint and in the characterization of the dignified sitter.

Utilizing a characteristic format derived from Titian, Tintoretto depicts the near-life size sitter just over half length. He gazes directly at the viewer, his torso almost perpendicular to the picture plane. The composition’s subdued blacks, greys, and blues focus attention on the sitter’s hands and head. Strongly lit from the left, the man’s face is rendered in stark chiaroscuro, with dots of pure white pigment animating his dark eyes. A pietra serena pilaster or column base with elaborately carved acanthus leaves and other foliate forms anchors the composition at right.

The almost confrontational encounter between subject and viewer—a hallmark of Tintoretto’s early portraits—recalls his near contemporaneous Self-Portrait (fig. 1), executed circa 1547. As in that example, this dark-haired sitter possesses remarkable physical and psychological presence. The relatively austere color palette and streamlined setting concentrate focus on the man’s visage. His incisive gaze and distinctly turned head, give the impression that he has just registered our presence. This sense of reaction, coupled with the prestezza, or speed of execution for which Tintoretto was celebrated, imbues the work with an immediacy, suggesting that Tintoretto has captured a singular moment in time.

¹ Echols and Ilchman 2018, p. 145.