Portrait of a Member of the Foscari Family

Venice, the most opulent city in sixteenth-century Europe, produced a remarkable school of painting through a synthesis of an Italian idealization of form and an appreciation of the sensuous surfaces of the physical world, heightened by the faceting properties of Venice's watery atmosphere. The sixteenth century witnessed a golden age in Venetian painting. In this portrait, Tintoretto’s famous rough, animated brushstroke brings an evocation of rich tactility to the lushly patterned, fur-trimmed velvet senatorial robes, which, brilliantly highlighted, cascade down the breadth of the canvas, asserting the sitter’s self-assured authority. Although the identity of the subject remains unknown, he has been associated with the Foscari family, since the portrait was formerly in the collection at the Palazzo Foscari.