Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman

Giovanni Bellini

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the shoulders up, a clean-shaven, pale-skinned man with shoulder-length brown hair and dressed in black fills this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and his shoulders extend off both sides of the composition. He looks off to our left with brown eyes under thin brows. He has a long, slightly bumped nose and the hint of a five-o-clock shadow around his pale pink lips, which are closed. His brimless black cap nearly touches the top edge of the composition. His wavy hair is cut into bangs across his forehead and is feathered down each side of his face to meet the longer hair at the back. He has a high-necked, ink-black garment lined with white across his neck. Two bands of white clouds span the azure-blue sky behind him. A stone ledge in front of the man, across the bottom of composition, is painted to look like it had been carved with the artist’s name: “IOANNES BELLINVS.” Two numbers are painted in the lower corners, with “98” to the left and “44” to the right.