Venetian School, last quarter of the 16th century

The canvas has been relined. The paint surface is slightly unclean and the varnish is discoloured. There is an area of old discoloured retouching to the right of the sitter's beard visible to the naked eye, measuring 3 x 2 cm. Ultra violet inspection reveals a great deal of restoration in the vertical margins, and the area of restoation by the sitter's beard is confirmed. There are further, small areas of retouching throughout the painting in particular in the fur collar and beard. The spandrels have been completely overpainted, presumably when the painting was housed in an oval. THe work si offered in a carved and giltwood frame with some very minor losses.
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This portrait would appear to derive inspiration from contemporary Venetian paintings such as Jacopo Bassano's Self Portrait.¹ We are grateful to Dr Andrew John Martin for suggesting an attribution to Orlando Flacco (1527–93), an artist from Verona and pupil of Francesco Torbido, il Moro (1486–1562); see, for example, his signed portrait of Titian, today in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm;² or Portrait of a man and his secretary, formerly attributed to Bassano, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.³

1. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; inv. no. 58; see E. Arslan, I Bassano, Milan 1960, reproduced vol. II, fig. 303.
2. See H.E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian. The Portraits, vol. II, London 1971, p. 180, cat. no. X96, reproduced fig. 272.
3. Inv. no. WA1975.155; see W.R. Rearick, 'The Portraits of Orlando Flacco', in Venezia Cinquecento, vol. XI, 2001, reproduced fig. 10.