{"id":815,"date":"2011-06-09T09:52:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T13:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/rosso2\/"},"modified":"2015-08-04T16:26:13","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T20:26:13","slug":"p-6","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/catalogues\/paintings\/p-6\/","title":{"rendered":"P.6 Portrait of a Young Man with a Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

P.6 Portrait of a Young Man with a Letter<\/p><\/div>\n

1519<\/p>\n

London, National Gallery, NG6584.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Panel, 85.5 x 66.5.<\/p>\n

Fig.P.6a<\/a>
Fig.P.6b<\/a> bw
Fig.P.6c<\/a> letter
Fig.P.6d<\/a> letter, turned and enlarged<\/p>\n

Condition good but slightly abraded, and the entire background is evenly and finely cracked; several vertical cracks at bottom edge, repaired.\u00a0 Repaired areas above sitter\u2019s left ear, at lower right in sleeve, and at lower right in general.\u00a0 Pentimenti at line of jacket across chest, at left edge of letter, and at fingers of sitter\u2019s right hand. Three lines of writing on the outside of letter are not legible; the text of the letter appears composed of real characters some of which are legible but not to the extent to make out whole words, but the first line is decipherable as: \u201cDie XXII Febij M.D.XVIII.\u201d\u00a0 This date of 22 February 1518 would be of 1519, modern style.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The sitter wears a black hat, a white shirt, and a dark gray garment tending towards a steely blue. He has brown hair, brown eyes, grayish black eyebrows, and a brownish complexion with pink cheeks and pink on the nose and chin, and reddish lips; his hands are also reddish. The letter is white with the slightest suggestion of a pink seal at the lower right covered by a triangle of paper; the writing is brown. Background olive green, visible also at the lower left and right.<\/p>\n

PROVENANCE: London, Colnaghi\u2019s, 1965; Howard A. Dawes, Birtsmorton Court, Worcestershire. Bought by the National Gallery, November 2000.<\/p>\n

LITERATURE:<\/p>\n

\n

Paintings by Old Masters<\/em>, London, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd., 20 May \u2013 11 June 1965, no. 7, Pl. V, with an attribution to Rosso supported by comparisons with his Portrait of a Man with a Helmet<\/em> in Liverpool [Fig.P.16a<\/a>] and his Portrait of a Young Man <\/em>in Washington, D.C. [Fig.P.8a<\/a>]; the year on the letter noted as 1518.<\/p>\n

Mentioned by Benedict Nicolson, BM<\/em>, CVII, 1965, 330, as by Rosso, with the date 1518, and as related to the portrait in Liverpool.<\/p>\n

Costamagna and Fabre, 1986, II, 415.<\/p>\n

Franklin, \u201cPortrait,\u201d 1989, 839, Fig. 40, as Rosso.<\/p>\n

Costamagna, 1989 (1984\u20131985), 21, as Rosso, dated February 1519, related to Raphael\u2019s Portrait of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino<\/em>, and the original source in Florence of portraits showing the sitter reading a letter, including the Portrait of Silvestro Aldobrandini<\/em> in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Ciardi and Mugnaini, 1991, 84\u201385, no.13, with Fig., as Rosso, 1518.<\/p>\n

Berti, 1993, 182, as dated 1518, and Sartesque.<\/p>\n

Franklin, 1994, 212\u2013216, 221\u2013222, 316, Pl. 170, noted in the caption of Pl. 170 as inscribed: \u201cDie XXII (?) Iunii 1518<\/em> (and with other less legible words including possibly Rosso\u2019s signature),\u201d and that the letter and the glance of the sitter at the viewer are common motifs in Florentine portraiture, with reference to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio\u2019s Portrait of an Aldobrandini<\/em> in the Minneapolis Museum of Art (Pl. 171).<\/p>\n

Valle, 1994, 61\u201363, Fig. 19, the letter dated 1518.<\/p>\n

Costamagna, 1994, 72, 73, Fig. 55, 195, under Cat. 57, 293, under Cat. A51, 306, under A78, as Rosso\u2019s, dated February 1518 (Florentine calendar).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The portrait is very closely related to the signed portrait in Liverpool (Fig.P.16a<\/a>) in the placement of the figure within the limits of the picture, in the handling of the large puffed sleeve, and in the angular description of the hands.\u00a0 The loose brushwork of the head, hair, and hands is very much like that of these same parts of the figures in the S. Maria Nuova Altarpiece of 1518 (Fig.P.5a<\/a>; Fig.P.5b<\/a>).\u00a0 Furthermore, the size of the forms are more like those in this altarpiece than in the later Liverpool picture confirming that the date on the letter in the portrait also indicates the date of the picture itself. Thus it was done at the beginning of 1519 by modern reckoning, according to Gino Corti\u2019s reading of the month as: Febij<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Interpretations of this portrait might take into account Kristeller\u2019s indications of letter writing in the Renaissance as a branch of literature and its widespread preference as a literary form (Paul Oskar Kristeller, \u201cThe Moral Thought of Renaissance Humanism,\u201d Chapters in Western Civilization<\/em>, I, 3rd ed., New York, 1961, reprinted in Renaissance Thought in the Arts<\/em>, Princeton, 1980, 20\u201368).<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>1<\/sup>As read by Gino Corti from a large photograph of the letter (Fig.P.6c<\/a>; Fig.P.6d<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1519 London, National Gallery, NG6584.\u00a0 Panel, 85.5 x 66.5. Fig.P.6a Fig.P.6b bw Fig.P.6c letter Fig.P.6d letter, turned and enlarged Condition good but slightly abraded, and the entire background is evenly and finely cracked; several vertical cracks at bottom edge, repaired.\u00a0 Repaired areas above sitter\u2019s left ear, at lower right in sleeve, and at lower right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":814,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-815","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11499,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/815\/revisions\/11499"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}