(Venice circa 1470–1531)
Portrait of a Man,
oil on panel, 17.9 x 13.5 cm, framed

bears inscription on the reverse: ANN. / AETATIS / AGENS. / XXIX.

Provenance:
Cassirer, Berlin, 1922 (according to Heinemann)

Literature:
F. Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e i Belliniani, Venice 1962, vol. I, illustrated p. 483, no. 536, vol. II, p. 199, no. 802 (as Vittore Belliniano)

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for suggesting the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

This painting was attributed to Vittore Belliniano by Heinemann in the 1960s (see literature) and he related it to a drawing by Giovanni Bellini in the Musée Condé, Chantilly (inv. no. DE 121).

Vicenzo Catena was a pupil, and possibly an assistant, of Giovanni Bellini, and he was also influenced by the Vivarini, Cima da Conegliano, Giorgione, Titian and during his Roman sojourn around 1520 by Raphael. The painter’s artistic production reached its peak during his artistic maturity, marked by a creative period as a portraitist. As Vasari stated in his Vite, Vincenzo Catena ‘molto più si adoperò in fare ritratti di naturale, che in alcuna altra sorte di pittura’ [‘applied himself more in making portraits from life, than to any other kind of painting’] (see G. Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. by G. Milanesi, vol. III, Florence 1878, p. 643). Among the artist’s most important paintings are the Portrait of a young man in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG1121), the Portrait of a priest in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 87), and the portraits of Giorgio Trissino and of a Venetian Senator respectively in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. RF 2098) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 30.95.258).