Francesco Beccaruzzi (Conegliano, c. 1492 – Treviso, ante 1563)

Portrait of a Gentleman

c. 1550

Oil on canvas, 108 X92 cm

Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. 908

The unknown gentleman in this portrait stands, elegantly dressed in a red velvet jacket with a black damask robe over it. His right hand, with a ring on his little finger, rests on a book and his left holds a handkerchief. His absorbed gaze and the rather domestic setting contrast with the backdrop of a wall with vegetation growing around it and the distant landscape background with a road traveled by tiny figures: this type of landscape was common in portraiture, especially in the Veneto, being found later in works by Moroni in Bergamo from the middle years of the century.

A significant feature of the setting is the rich carpet covering the table, carefully arranged to present its great central octagonal motif. This enables us to identify it clearly as a large pattern “Holbein” rug, like the antique specimen in the Zaleski collection displayed in this exhibition. This type of furnishing, characteristic of aristocratic portraits, is here used by Francesco Beccaruzzi, a painter probably from Conegliano and long active in Treviso, to whom the painting was ascribed by Berenson (cf. Paolucci, 1979), an attribution has stood ever since. But it is interesting to note that this elegant accessory in portraiture seems to date from much earlier, to the start of the century, and it rapidly became established, especially in the northern region of Lombardy, the Veneto, and Ferrara.

One of the earliest examples is the solemn Portrait of the Chancellor Domenico Morone by Andrea Solario, in the Gallarati Scotti collection in Milan, in which a large pattern “Holbein” rug is prominently displayed on a table. It returns in the Portrait of the Protonotary Giovanni Giuliano (Zuan Zulian), of uncertain attribution, in the National Gallery, London, and less conspicuously in the Portrait of a Gentleman with a Letter and Hourglass by Moretto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the carpet is draped over the sill in the foreground. Another notable work by Moretto is the series of portraits of the ladies of the Martinengo family, depicted gazing out from behind balustrades laid with rugs, in a room completely frescoed in the form of a loggia in Palazzo Salvadego, Brescia, in 1543.

A carpet also appears in Dosso Dossi’s intense female portrait of Laura Pisani (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum). Then in the Veneto there are a number of magnificent portraits, such as Jacopo Bassano’s Gentleman with a Letter and a Book in the Kress Collection (Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art), and the Portrait of Alessandro Vittoria by Paolo Veronese (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). These were preceded by Lorenzo Lotto’s well known family portraits, such as the Portrait of a Husband and Wife (St. Petersburg, Hermitage) and the Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children (London, the National Gallery), and followed by several variants during the course of the century, such as the multiple portrait with a chessboard resting on a table covered with a rug.