Probably by Gentile Bellini, 'A Man with a Pair of Dividers (?)', about 1500
About the work
Overview
This portrait is probably by Gentile Bellini, though we can‘t be sure. It’s unusual among his portraits – we don’t know the identity of the sitter and most of Gentile’s surviving portraits are of well-known figures. It was once thought to be the mathematician Girolamo Malatini because he holds a pair of dividers (a compass).
Malatini is said to have taught Giovanni Bellini, Gentile’s brother, and Carpaccio, another Venetian painter, how to incorporate theories of perspective into their paintings. But it was not only mathematicians who used compasses – artists and architects, among other professionals, did too. An alternative suggestion is that Gentile has painted Giovanni.
Like many of Gentile’s portraits, the background is very dark so that the sitter’s face stands out, as do his hands. The lack of detail is unusual in a work by Gentile, who usually took great pains to express the qualities of varying surfaces in paint and enjoyed painting different kinds of materials and jewels.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- A Man with a Pair of Dividers (?)
- Artist
- Probably by Gentile Bellini
- Artist dates
- active about 1460; died 1507
- Date made
- about 1500
- Medium and support
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 69.2 × 59.1 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Bought, 1886
- Inventory number
- NG1213
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
Provenance
Additional information
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Martin Davies, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools’, London 1986; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
Exhibition history
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2013Art under Attack: Histories of British IconoclasmTate Britain2 October 2013 - 5 January 2014
Bibliography
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1885London, British Museum, Add. MS. 38965, Layard Papers: Letter of 26 October from Morelli to Layard, 26 October 1885
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1901A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, 11 vols, Milan 1901
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1909G. Gronau, Die Künstlerfamilie Bellini, Leipzig 1909
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1910J.P. Richter, The Mond Collection: An Appreciation, London 1910
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1913National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the British and Foreign Pictures, 81st edn, London 1913
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1932B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works, with an Index of Places, Oxford 1932
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1936B. Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, Milan 1936
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1951Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, London 1951
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1957B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works, with an Index of Places: Venetian School, 2 vols, London 1957
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1968C. Gould, 'An Identification for the Sitter of a Bellinesque Portrait', The Burlington Magazine, CX/788, 1968, p. 626
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1985J. Meyer zur Capellen, Gentile Bellini, Stuttgart 1985
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1986Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, revised edn, London 1986
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2001
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
Images
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