Portrait of a military commander, oil on canvas, 116 x 97 cm, framed

Provenance:
Fritz Mandl, Vienna, seized by Nazi authorities on the 10 Oct. 1938;
restituted to F. Mandl on the 29 Sep. 1950;
Jonkheer Henri Jean Louis Leyssius and the Lady Jacoba van den Bosch; by descent to Lady V. Rheineck Leyssius;
Anonymous sale, Christie’s London, 12 July 1963, lot 80;
private collection, England.

We are grateful to Professor Peter Humfrey and Dr. Tom Nichols for confirming the attribution to Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto.

Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto was amongst the most celebrated artists of the Italian Renaissance, who together with his contemporaries Titian and Veronese dominated the art of 16th Century Venice.

In addition to his religious works, such as the celebrated series for the Scuola di San Rocco, Tintoretto was also a celebrated portraitist. Tintoretto’s broad, painterly style was heightened by his dramatic use of lighting effects, such as those seen in the present painting. Here light is used to create the stormy sky, and there are highlights on the chainmail and armour.

Iconographically, the present portrait is extremely close to Tintoretto’s Portrait of a Military Commander in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. In the Vienna painting, whose size is almost identical to that of the present painting, the pose of the sitter and view through the window are essentially the same, although the sitter is clearly different, and the composition is framed by a column on the left.