ROMANINO, Girolamo
(b. ca. 1484, Brescia, d. ca. 1559, Brescia)

Portrait of a Man

1520-25
Oil on wood, 83 x 72 cm
Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest

Romanino (Girolamo di Romano) studied under the local masters of Brescia but his art was decisively influenced by his famous contemporaries in Venice: Giorgione, Titian and Palma Vecchio. His compositions are large, the structure firm and harmonious, the colours warm and varied. He was greatly concerned with expressing emotion and mood, and his work contains a certain romantic and poetic element.

His Portrait of a Man depicts a young man, wearing a gold brocade coat and a gold-coloured hat and posed against a dark green curtain, who looks rather wistfully into the distance, lost in thought; though his right hand rest on the hilt of his sword, the pose is that of someone both relaxed and meditative. The identity of the sitter is not known (he may have been a member of one of the ruling families of Brescia); the same sitter appears in a smaller fragmentary version now in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.




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