Portrait of a Man with a Landscape View

Jacopo Tintoretto, with landscape by Maarten de Vos

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned, bearded man dressed in black gazes at us in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his hazel eyes under thick brows. He has close-cut, dark brown hair, a short nose, a trimmed beard, and a bushy moustache over pale pink lips, which are closed. He wears a voluminous velvet-black cloak trimmed with sable-brown fur, and his far arm rests on a stone ledge under a window. The face of the ledge is carved in relief with leaves. The man’s other arm hangs by his side, and he holds a brown glove in that hand. A celery-green drapery behind him fills the right half of the background. A short span of wall leads to a window to the left, through which a deep landscape is painted in tones of tan, gold, and bronze brown. Hills, a fence, stairs, what might be aqueducts, and a castle-like complex are nestled against tall hills under a white sky shaded with light tan clouds.