Marco Basaiti, 'Portrait of a Young Man', about 1495-1500

This is an early work by the Venetian painter Marco Basaiti. We do not know who this young man is but we can tell his age, origins and social rank from his costume.

Venetian men over the age of 25 were called ‘togati’, meaning that they were allowed to wear the toga, the outfit which defined their status. The two uppermost of the three classes, the aristocratic ‘gentlemen’ and the ‘citizens’, both wore long black floor-length gowns which fastened at the throat with a very small clasp, just visible here to the right. The picture must have been painted during the colder months because the gown is lined with fur, which you can see poking out of the opening at his chest. The hat, called a bareta, was also part of the regulation uniform. The young man’s fair, bushy hair is in a style fashionable in Venice at the time, and creates a vibrant contrast to his sober black clothes.

Basaiti has placed the young man against a vast landscape, partly screened by a bright green cloth – a backdrop often found in Venetian images of the Virgin and Child made for private worship in the home (as in Basaiti’s own version and in those made by his fellow Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini and his workshop).

Basaiti’s style was very close to that of Bellini. He has signed this work at the lower right corner on the marble effect ledge that separates us from the sitter. The ‘P’ stands for pinxit, meaning ‘he painted it’ in Latin. The device of the ledge was also favoured by Bellini (see for example his portrait of Doge Loredan). It gives the sense that the sitter is occupying a particular space, because he is behind an object that we can imagine reaching out to touch. Here, Basaiti has reinforced this illusion by painting his signature in grey on the ledge to look as though it is carved into the stone.