1555 · Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome

We do not know the identity of the young gentleman in the picture. He gazes out with a disquieting and indecipherable expression, a characteristic feature of some of the portraits painted by Tintoretto in the years around 1555, such as the Portrait of Onofrio Panvinio in the Galleria Colonna. Some critics detect the influence of Giorgione in these paintings (in fact this portrait was attributed to Giorgione in the inventory of 1819), but this emotional pose, with its penetrating psychological component, is a quality that seems to have been derived from Lorenzo Lotto, as can be seen from the Portrait of a Thirty-Seven Year Old Man by the latter in the Doria Pamphilj collection.Show more