Lombard School, early-16th century

An attribution to Bartolomeo Veneto was first proposed by Adolfo Venturi in the catalogue of the Guidi collection sale in 1902. This attribution was not questioned until the New York sale in 1984, when the picture was offered as 'Attributed to Bartolomeo Veneto'. In her catalogue on the artist (op. cit.), Laura Pagnotta finally excludes the attribution to Bartolomeo Veneto, noting that the overall handling points more towards a Lombard artist, clearly influenced by Giorgione and Venetian art in general, with a certain knowledge of Northern art as well. She tentatively proposes an attribution to Cesare Cesariano (1475-1543), better known as an architect and the traslator of Vitruvius into Italian, comparing it with the altarpiece of The Madonna and Child with Saints Euphemia, Agnes, Sostene and Victor in the church of Saint Euphemia in Piacenza. This attribution to Cesariano has not been accepted by the most recent scholarship.

We are grateful to Jane Bridgeman for dating this portrait to circa 1515-1518 on the basis of the costume, noting that the hat worn by the sitter, ornamented with a white ribbon threaded through it and tied in place with a large bow, was especially popular with soldiers. It occurs in Lorenzo Lotto's predella panel of The Stoning of Saint Stephen of 1516 (Bergamo, Accademia Carrara). The saione (ample overgarment) is found in the Miracle of the Miser's Heart of 1511, attributed to Francesco Vecellio (Padua, Scuola del Santo), Raphael's Mass at Bolsena of 1512 at the Vatican and Romanino's Portrait of a man of c. 1515-1517 (The Royal Collection).