Portrait of a Man with a Cap, in Profile Facing Right

Author: Albert Elen

Opinions about the maker of this small profile portrait differ in the literature. Meder (1922) regarded it as Dutch, by an unknown medallist. Not much later (Haarlem 1926-27) the drawing was given to Antonello da Messina (c.1430-1479), while just before that, in 1925, Koenigs had acquired it as anonymous Italian, fifteenth century. Koenigs’s assistant, Helmuth Lütjens, in turn, listed it as by Gentile Bellini (c. 1430/1434-1507), which was understandable given the similarities to male heads in the large historical paintings by this Venetian artist. This attribution held, with interruptions, alternating with one (Paris/Rotterdam/Haarlem 1962 and Aikema/Meijer 1985) to his brother Giovanni Bellini (c.1430-1516). In 1991, in the supplement to his standard work Bellini e i Belliniani (1991), Heinemann regarded it as a secure copy by Francesco Bonsignori, however without indicating which specific example this was based on.

A number of Belliniesque paintings of the Virgin and Child in a window by the Veronese artist Bonsignori, a pupil and assistant of Andrea Mantegna (c.1431-1506), are known, as well as a 1487 portrait of an older man, possibly the Venetian senator Giovanni Cappello, now in London.^[1] The preliminary study for this is held in Vienna (fig.).^[2] Although rendered in three-quarter face and worked out in detail on a sheet of paper that is much larger than the Rotterdam fragment, we see similar skill in the realistically depicted physiognomy. In Vienna there is moreover a large profile portrait of an unknown man with a cap attributed to Bonsignori.^[3] Both Viennese portraits are finished drawings. The Rotterdam drawing, by contrast, is a swiftly sketched study in which the artist’s attention was concentrated on the face with a half-closed eye, a raised eyebrow and tight lips. Given its simpler design, the portrait with its striking, expressive physiognomy was probably a preliminary study for a painted portrait which, like the Vienna drawings, was intended to be a stand-alone portrait or part of a larger composition.