Bartolomeo Veneto
active 1502–1546
NG 287 
Lodovico Martinengo

Nicholas Penny, 2004

Extracted from:
Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2004).

1530

Oil on wood, 105.5 × 72.6 cm

Signed and dated:

B…TOLOM/V.NETUS FACIEBAT/MDXXX.XVI ZUN [1530]

Support

The dimensions given above include the strips of varnished pine that were added to the sides of the panel. Without these the width would be 70.8 cm. The panel, now between 0.5 and 0.6 cm thick, has a convex warp and is extensively worm‐eaten. Although NG 287 was probably thinned before cradling, some Italian paintings of this period were as thin as this one (including, perhaps, NG 2507, attributed to Bartolomeo Veneto). The cradle consists of seven fixed vertical members of mahogany, with eight oak crosspieces, originally movable. Some of the vertical members were widened in parts to reinforce the panel when new splits developed. Before cradling, a join in the panel was recorded about 4 cm from the right. It is likely that the panel has been cut on both sides. In addition to the evidence of the image itself (see below), the gesso, especially on the upper right edge, is broken in such a way as to suggest the painting was sawn down. Nevertheless, the painting may always have had a narrow format, a format that Bartolomeo seems to have favoured.¹

Materials and Technique

The panel has a gesso ground with no separate priming. There is evidence of underdrawing in black from paint cross‐sections. Analysis by gas‐chromatography indicates that the paint binding medium is walnut oil.

Pure vermilion and vermilion mixed with black is used extensively for the jacket and cap, with red lakes glazes applied to develop the shadows. The rose of the sleeves is painted with a lake glaze over white (perhaps lightly faded in part). The feathers of the cap pass over the completed dark green background. The greens of the background are made up of several layers of translucent deep green paint containing copper green pigments incorporating black and white to modulate tone, and undermodelled with an opaque layer of green which contains substantial additions of black pigment in the darkest areas.

X‐radiography reveals that no revisions were made in the course of painting. There are drying‐cracks (see below), probably due to the application of new layers of paint on top of layers that were not yet sufficiently dry.

Conservation

On 15 August 1856 John Bentley removed the old varnish from the painting and revarnished it with mastic.² The back was protected with glazed brown ‘holland’ at the same date. The painting was said to be in ‘fair state’, although some ‘repairs’ (that is, discoloured retouchings) were apparent. In 1875 the painting was ‘cleaned’ (presumably surface‐cleaned) and flakes were ‘restored’. By July 1887 splits were apparent in three places, and ‘Morrill’ fitted the ‘parquet’ (cradle) in the same year.³ Small losses (‘spots’) were retouched in April 1937. Between May and June of the following year, tests revealed a previously unsuspected level of abrasion and plans to clean the painting were abandoned. However, many blisters were laid, and the painting was first dusted and then surface‐cleaned with ‘a mild wax soap leaving a wax finish’. In August of the following year the painting broke loose from its packaging in transit to Bangor, during the mass evacuation of the Gallery’s paintings from London, causing losses at four points along the lower edge. Three splits were noted and in February 1940 the cradle was modified, as described above, by ‘Morrill’s carpenter’. In March 1943 an accident in the quarry store worsened the ‘vertical abrasions’. In August 1946 ‘vertical cracks to the right of centre were stopped and varnished’. This was preparatory to more polishing with wax soap, though it is not clear that the polishing ever took place. Between December 1978 and March 1980 the painting was cleaned (fig. 3) and restored. The examination report dated 7 December 1978 had recommended removal of the cradle, but this was not undertaken.

Condition

The paint surface is severely abraded in the black background, especially just above the sitter’s right shoulder, and in the black doublet. The folds of the doublet tightened by the belt are now not easily legible. The flesh is also very worn so that the fine first beard on the chin and the sideboards are almost invisible, and the hair to the left of the beret is generally interpreted as, or at least confused with, shadow. The face has been considerably retouched. The rich green hanging has the distinctive rectangular network of minute cracks that is commonly found where dark green is employed in north Italian paintings of this date. There are a number of drying‐cracks, notably where the strips of satin have been painted on top of [page 5][page 6]the red of the jacket. There are scattered losses: vertical ones in the green drapery to the right, where there is a major split, and others in the black background to the left and also in the paper scroll which hangs there.

Inscription

A strip of paper or parchment curled around the pole supporting the fabric behind the sitter is inscribed VDOVI / …VM / MART… / …AETA…S / SVAE / ANN… / B…TOLOM / V…NETVS / FACIEBAT / M.D.XXX / XVI ZVN (fig. 1). In some cases only part of the letter survives, but all those that can be reconstructed are given here. The penultimate letter in the seventh line, ‘o’, is raised and smaller in size.⁴ The inscription must have read ‘Ludovicum Mart. aetatis suae ann —. Bartolom. Venetus faciebat. MDXXX. XVI zun’, which, taking ‘Mart’ as an abbreviation for Martinengo and ‘zun’ as an abbreviation of the dialect for Giugno, means that the inscription should be translated as: ‘Ludovico Martinengo at the age of — years. Painted by Bartolomeo Veneto 16 June 1530.’ Another reading of the date is mentioned in the section below on dating. When the picture was acquired by the National Gallery, Eastlake recorded the inscription as ‘Aetatibus Ann XXI’. Even if this part of the inscription was a restoration, the age may have been based on reliable records.⁵

Attribution

The painting is inscribed as the work of Bartolomeo Veneto and it seems never to have been attributed to any other artist. The device of a thin rolled suspended cartellino was itself a ‘signature’ of Bartolomeo’s (see fig. 2).⁶

Dating

The painting is dated 16 June 1530, as all scholars correctly noted until Cecil Gould, in his catalogue of 1959 (revised edition 1975), proposed that the XVI in the inscription belonged with MDXXX on the previous line and thus indicated 1546. Despite the fact that 1546 is sixteen years later than any other dated or documented work by the artist, he believed that the costume ‘would absolutely exclude’ a date of 1530.⁷ He was influenced here by notes that Stella Mary Pearce (Newton) had made, and on her comparison of the painting to Niccolò dell’Abate’s Bolognese frescoes of the later 1540s.⁸ This argument was rejected by Creighton Gilbert,⁹ and Pearce later changed her mind about the date but decided that the dress must be Piedmontese.¹⁰ However, as Laura Pagnotta notes, there are close enough parallels with the clothes in Moretto’s portrait of 1526 (NG 1025, see pp. 154–8) and in Callisto Piazza’s frescoes of the life of John the Baptist in the Church of the Incoronata at Lodi of 1530–2.¹¹ Not only does Moretto’s sitter have a similar style of fine linen shirt, or camicia, embroidered at the neck and with a coloured lace and long cuffs, but he also has one arm under his coat and one emerging from it, and one glove on and one off. Callisto Piazza depicts more than one young man with small hat, short hair and sleeves of a similar shape to those of Bartolomeo’s sitter.

Identity

The inscription indicates that the sitter was called Ludovico Martinengo (for the Martinengo family, see pp. 178–9). If the painting had remained in Venice, where it was acquired by the Gallery, then it may be significant that Ludovico was a common name among the descendants of the Zuanne Martinengo who was accepted into the Venetian patriciate in the fifteenth century. Zuanne’s great grandson Ludovico Martinengo da Barco was appointed Captain of the Venetian army in 1515 and two of Ludovico’s grandsons were given the same name (which probably means that one of them died early).¹² Camillo Boselli noted that two sons of the Martinengo family (presumably these same boys) were given this name in 1506 and 1509.¹³ The sitter looks as if he was not much more than 21 years old – which is the age that was at one stage recorded in the inscription – and a boy born in 1509 would be that age in 1530. However, as will be shown below (see Provenance), the painting was not acquired from the Martinengo da Barco branch of the family. Members of other branches of the family in Brescia may have been painted by Bartolomeo, and indeed there is a record of portraits by Titian, Moretto and ‘Bertolamao Veneto’ in the house of Pietro Antonio Martinengo in Brescia in the second half of the seventeenth century.¹⁴ When the painting was acquired Eastlake proposed that the sitter may have been a member of [page 7]the association of young nobles known as the Compagnia della Calza. Gould rejected this proposal, presumably because the most obvious sign of the Compagnia – the colourful hose (calza) – was not depicted,¹⁵ but Eastlake was probably struck by the way one of Cesare Vecellio’s illustrations of Venetian costume shows a young man wearing a coat of a somewhat similar style.¹⁶

Clothes and Accessories

The sitter is depicted three‐quarter length against a green cloth with a pink border, which is looped over a thin pole. The duller green of the reverse of the cloth is revealed where there is a horizontal fold and also down the left‐hand side. The sitter wears a small cap decorated with aglets of gold with blue enamel (for aglets, see p. 174) and with a white ostrich feather. His right hand holds his right glove and perhaps supports his jacket, which is of a curious cut, with a collar visible only on his left side. The ringht arm passes through the jacket; the left is beneath it. His gloved left hand rests on the hilt of his sword. Part of the sword’s guard is visible, as is the pommel, which appears to project towards us. The pommel is lenticular in shape but here seen from the end, which is decorated with ‘a [page 8]simple hexafoil with narrow pointed petals worked in relief’ – a type ‘particularly common on surviving hilts apparently belonging to the period 1515–35’.¹⁷

Martinengo’s short scarlet coat is bordered with three strips of crinkled and slashed satin, which is yellow where it catches the light but green in the shadows. The sleeves, which are not attached to the coat, are of plum‐red silk, sewn with a triple line of gold thread around the cuff. Triple lines are also sewn (at right angles to these) along the sleeves, and these are connected to each other by diagonal triple lines. Between each of these triple diagonals the fabric is slashed to reveal cloth of gold. A codpiece of yellow and pink satin bordered with the same scarlet as the cap and coat protrudes from the black doublet. The camicia which is visible at the collar and cuffs is embroidered with a pattern of rose stitching with a little yellow; it is tied at the neck with a lace of the same colours.

The cleaning in 1978–9 revealed two objects with curved outlines cut by the left edge of the painting at about the level of the sitter’s chin. Both objects are grey, and the smaller and lower of the two is warmer in colour. The sitter seems to have been looking at them.

Acquisition

The painting was acquired in 1855, the first year of Eastlake’s directorship, on the initiative of the Gallery’s travelling agent, Otto Mündler. Eastlake had been in Venice in the autumn to reconsider the Gallery’s policy regarding the Manfrin Collection and to negotiate the purchase of Veronese’s Adoration from S. Silvestro. He was obliged to leave the city on 20 October and thus to ‘forego some opportunities of inspecting certain choice collections which would have been accessible to me’. He asked Mündler ‘to make further researches’. Mündler in due course ‘forwarded…descriptions, with his opinion, of a Basaiti, and of two inscribed specimens by Bartolommeo Vivarini and the Master who signs himself Bartolommeus Venetus… he also proposed the purchase of a portrait of a lady by Pordenone’. Eastlake authorised the purchase of the five paintings for the sum of £246 12s. 2d. A relatively small expenditure of this kind could be sanctioned by the director without reference to the Trustees, who probably learned of these transactions in Eastlake’s report dated 4 February 1856, from which the above extracts are taken.¹⁸

Mündler’s diary reveals that he had ‘Found a very fine & interesting portrait by a rare Venetian master, Bartolomeo Veneto, 1530’, on a visit to ‘Pallazo Michiele Pisani’ on 27 October 1855. He transcribed part of the inscription and noted that a ‘picture with the same inscription is in the Manfrin Collection’.¹⁹ This is a reference to the portrait of a lady now in the Timken Art Gallery, San Diego,²⁰ also dated 1530, which both he and Eastlake must have recently studied very carefully. Mündler evidently wrote to Eastlake about this and other paintings soon afterwards and he received a reply on 10 November. On 14 November he purchased the ‘Basaiti’ Saint Jerome (NG 284, now attributed to Giovanni Bellini) from Marcovich, on 15 November he purchased the Virgin and Child with Saints Paul and Jerome by Bartolomeo Vivarini (NG 284) from Conte Bernardino Corniani di Algarotti, and on 16 November he visited ‘Contessa Michiele Pisani who promises to let me have the portrait of young Martinengo by Bartolomeo Veneziano, for 100 Zecchini’.²¹ The actual purchase was completed on 20 November – ‘from the sons Michiel, for 60 Napol’.²² The vendors were later recorded as ‘the representatives of the Conte Girolamo Michiel Pisani, heir of the Conte Girolamo Martinengo’.²³ It is interesting that on 23 October, only a few days before he ‘found’ this portrait, Mündler had recorded, in Palazzo Michieli delle Colonne, Bartolomeo Veneto’s earliest known work: ‘a picture in the style of Previtali with the curious inscription “1502.9.April. bartolamio mezo venezian e mezo cremonese”.’²⁴ It is clear that this is not the same Michiel palace in which he saw the portrait, and he seems not to have connected the two works, which are indeed distinct in style and represent the two extremes of the artist’s œuvre.²⁵

Mündler’s purchases in Venice in the winter of 1855 were not expensive, and the Bartolomeo Veneto was, at £48 10s., the second cheapest (after the ‘Basaiti’ at £43 13s.1d.).²⁶ Indeed, all but one of the pictures from the Galvagna Collection selected by Mündler in the following month – and several of these were inferior works – were more highly priced.²⁷ The Bartolomeo Veneto arrived in the National Gallery on 2 June 1856, together with thirteen other pictures enclosed in three packing cases.²⁸ It may seem a surprising purchase, even if an inexpensive one, but the extent of damage had been very ingeniously concealed and, to judge from old photographs, the picture did have a poetic character, even if only an adventitious one, which cleaning has removed. Moreover, Mündler and Eastlake were, like all connoisseurs, attracted by rarities and discoveries – Bartolomeo Veneto was to be found in no dictionary – and as art historians they favoured paintings which, on account of their inscriptions, also served as documents.

Provenance

Conte Girolamo Martinengo (see above); certainly in the collection of the latter’s heir, Conte Girolamo Michiel Pisani, by November 1855 when purchased by the National Gallery. Girolamo Silvio Martinengo (b. 1753) was the last of the branch of the Martinengo family known as the Martinengo ‘di Padernello’ or ‘della Fabrica’, which had been established by Giovanni Francesco di Prevosto in the fifteenth century, and admitted to the Venetian patriciate in the same century. He married Elisabetta Michiel.²⁹ This can cause him to be confused with Conte Francesco Leopardo V Martinengo (1805–1884), the last of the Martinengo da Barco branch, who married Cecilia Michiel and inherited the Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne (where Mündler saw another painting by Bartolomeo Veneto).³⁰ For more on the Martinengo family, see pp. 178–9.

Framing

The painting has a carved frame, with the gilding darkened by toning. It is of a wreath pattern with fluting at the outer edge, raking from the centres. The wreath consists of sharp [page 9]leaves and small round fruits, tightly packed. The leaves point upward on both the left and the right sides of the frame, and to the right on both the upper and the lower sides. In such a frame one expects the leaves to ‘descend’ from the centre of the upper side, or to be centred on all sides, or to ‘rotate’ continuously. The arrangement here suggests that the frame was constructed out of carving previously employed for another purpose, such as the divisions of a richly coffered ceiling.³¹ The painting has certainly had this frame for at least twenty years; it is probably the frame in which it arrived in the Gallery and thus may have been given to the painting by the Venetian dealer Antonio Zen, to whom Mündler consigned the Gallery’s new acquisitions in January 1856.³² The toning resembles that on other frames of paintings in this group, some of which seem also to have been fabricated from older frames and wood carvings. The taste for antique frames (often cobbled together from fragments usually altered in size and almost always much restored) was unusual at this date and was not established in the National Gallery until the mid‐twentieth century. It may have been Mündler’s preference.

Notes