Portrait of a Humanist

Sebastiano del Piombo

National Gallery of Art

A bearded, pale-skinned man with shoulder-length, dark brown hair is shown from the hips up against a dark, emerald-green curtain in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s body is angled slightly to our left, while his head turns to look directly at us with dark, shadowed eyes. His chin-length hair is parted down the middle and tucked behind his ears. He wears a dark robe over a white shirt with a high collar. In his left hand, to our right, he holds a folded piece of yellowish paper or cloth, and his other hand rests just below it with fingers pointing downward. He is lit from our right so the far side of his face is thrown into shadow. At his shoulder and to our left, a shelf or table covered with green holds a globe, an open book with pages filled with text, a stack of closed books, and a quill resting in an inkwell. Some of the text in the open book is visible but not clearly legible. Most of the background is filled with the jewel-toned green curtain, but a sliver to the left, behind the objects, is black.