This portrait is notable for the restrained elegance of the setting, and most of all for Tintoretto's unusually strong and three-dimensional modeling of the face. Interestingly, the great Baroque portrait painter Anthony van Dyck, who drew this painting in Niccolò Doria's house in Genoa, took it for a Titian. In this work, and with his chameleon-like stylistic adaptability, Tintoretto was obviously taking account of the conservative taste of his Genoese client - probably a member of the powerful art-loving Doria family.
|