A Procurator of Saint Mark's

Jacopo Tintoretto

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the shins up, a pale-skinned, balding, bearded man wearing a voluminous rust-red robe lined with black-speckled white fur looks out at us in this vertical portrait painting. The man sits in a wood-framed chair with a curving seat. His body angled slightly to our left, but his face turns to us. He looks out with dark gray eyes under a lined forehead, one eyebrow slightly cocked. He has a rounded nose, thin lips, and paunchy cheeks. A few wisps of gray hair are suggested across the top of his mostly bald head, and his gray beard is trimmed. His left hand, to our right, rests on the terminus of the chair’s arm, and his other hand rests in front of his belly, presumably with that elbow on the other arm. His robe falls heavily in deep folds, and the wide openings of the sleeves continue down and off the bottom edge of the canvas. The front of the robe and the insides of the sleeves are lined with white fur dotted with black. A scarf-like band of fabric brocaded with dark red-on-red drapes over one shoulder. The background is charcoal gray except for a dark, olive-green shape suggesting a doorway over the man’s left shoulder.