Jacopo da Ponte, called Jacopo Bassano

(Bassano del Grappa circa 1510–1592)
Portait of a bearded man, bust length,
oil on canvas, 68.5 x 59.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Commendatore Ventura, Florence, by 1928, when purchased by
Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, by whom gifted to the
Denver Art Museum, 1962;
sale, Christie’s, New York, 27 January 2010, lot 272 (as Circle of Titian);
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Alessandro Ballarin for suggesting the attribution of the present painting to Jacopo Bassano and for cataloguing the present lot.

The portraiture of Jacopo Bassano is an aspect of his production that has only come into focus in the past fifty years: as recently as 1960 certain works that are now assigned to Jacopo Palma il Giovane, were instead thought to be works of his late period, while there appeared to be no portraits from his youth or maturity, apart from the Portrait of a man with a book formerly in the Kress collection and now at the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis. While the most recent studies have confirmed the importance of this portrait for his early years during the 1530s, new studies have also fixed a few, but significant, points of reference for subsequent periods: the Franciscan monk with a skull belonging to the Duke of Shelbourne, in Bowood, dated to the 1540s, the Portrait of a man in the Getty Museum and the Podestà of Bassano in Berlin, dated to the 1550s. Moreover, the pre-dating to the 1560s of the Portrait of a prelate in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has allowed an understanding of the small Portrait of Torquato Tasso, belonging to the Kisters, and dated 1566, This, in turn, has permitted a similar dating to be applied to the Hampton Court Portrait of a man with gloves, which startlingly anticipates the seicento. Both the latter works are significant for an understanding of the transformation that overtook Bassano’s art at the time of the Saint Eleuterio altarpiece. In this context it has consequently also been possible to recognise the full meaning, and to restore to a fully autograph status, the Portrait of a man at prayer in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa. With regard to the 1570s, having freed this period of the Boston Portrait, it has been possible to restore works to the father’s hand that previously had been believed to be by his children, Leandro and Francesco. Other notable works restored to his hand are the Portrait of a man with a table filled with books from the Galleria Spada, Rome, and the Francesco I De’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany at Kassel: two works that moreover are problematical in relation to the magnificent Portrait of a man in the National Gallery, Oslo. The reconstruction of the last years of Bassano’s activity during the 1580s has only been achieved in still more recent times with the recognition of what has been called the artist’s ‘quinta maniera’ or ‘fifth style’. For this phase the artist’s catalogue is quite rich in works, all of which are extraordinary, and by-and-large stylistically more sketched than fully finished, but once again, we are lacking portraits, if we exclude The Architect Antonio Dal Ponte that was with Brod in London during the 1960s, before it disappeared into a private collection.

The present Portrait of a man is an addition that is certain to shed light on the final phase of Bassano’s activity as a portraitist, during the 1580s. The subject is set against a wall that is closed on the left by a pilaster and a marbled surface, and possibly by a drape beyond. The three-quarter view is frank in its great simplicity, and the motion of the head as it turns to face us is no less so. These are qualities that assert the present portrait at the time, and in the wake of the great Venetian portraitists, Titian and Tintoretto. The blue mantle that the sitter wears closed over his chest along its brief ermine borders, sheathes the figure pushing his features into relief, creating a special effect that is seconded by the dark skull-cap he wears, which is made from the same blue material as his mantle. A passage of great beauty is achieved in the juxtaposition of the predominantly cold blue hue of the mantle and cap, with the contrasting, and predominantly warm golden-ochre flesh tones of the sitter’s features, within which the piercing blue of the subject’s eyes is emphasised. The blue of the robe and cap is today darker than it must originally have been, having been attenuated by surface consumption, and disturbed by the attempt at a certain point to modify the form of the subject’s left shoulder and cap. These interventions should not be confused with those to the right shoulder, which instead reveal the signs of an autograph pentimento. The modelling of the features, which is entirely intact compared with the rest of the picture surface, is especially animated: the light is reflected and dispersed on the subject’s brow, permeating the flesh tones with a hundred hues, while the areas of shadow are finely touched in with the brush point.

In this pictorial essay which confers upon the subject’s features the impression of an air of fragrant freshness, the elderly Bassano’s hand is undoubtedly present. The shimmering silver hairs of the sitter’s light beard bind the subject’s head into the surrounding space and in relation to his blue robes. A similar mediatory role is achieved with the white shirt collar that emerges at the neck of the subject’s mantle. Represented here we have one of the great elders, whose clear and authoritative gaze, and whose severe and austere expression is unforgettable: he is depicted as one of the great elders of Venetian art before whom it is impossible not to feel a sense of respect and awe. This impression is further communicated with the most simple of means: compositional economy, life-affirming features, and the strength of the sitter’s gaze. We do not know who the subject, portrayed here in his seventies, was. He wears a cap on his head which is the same as those worn by the Podestà di Bassano in Kassel and by Bassano himself in the portrait made by his son Leandro (this is now in the Kunsthistorischen Museum, Vienna); a figure wearing the same style of cap is also present in the Circumcision of the Museo Civico di Bassano, dated 1577.