Images(2)

Portrait of a Man Wearing a Gold Chain

Artist Giovanni Cariani b. circa 1485, San Giovanni Bianco near Fuipiano; d. after 1547, Venice

Datecirca 1525–1530

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions30 3/8 x 31 5/8 in. (77.2 x 80.3 cm)
Frame: 41 5/8 x 42 3/4 x 3 1/2 in. (105.7 x 108.6 x 8.9 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberGL.60.17.44

On View

On view

Label TextCariani spent his career between his native Bergamo (the westernmost Venetian city on the Italian mainland) and Venice. He was strongly influenced by other Venetian painters of his generation, including Titian (1488/90–1576) and Palma Vecchio (1479/80–1528).

The sitter in this portrait is unknown, but his massive gold curb-link chain, black gown with fur revers (undersurface), and exposed leather glove suggest he was a wealthy patrician (aristocrat) or merchant. The architectural setting for the portrait, a shallow ornamental recess in a wall, or niche, is found in other Venetian portraits of the period.
[L. Humphrey, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," 2024]ProvenanceCreated Italy c. 1525–30. Del Mayno family, Milan [1]; Robert Stayner Holford (1808–1892), Dorchester House, London and Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, UK [2]; by inheritance to Sir George Lindsay Holford (1860–1926), Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, UK [3]; [his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, July 15, 1927, lot no. 91]; Modigliani [4]. [Adolfo Werner, Milan by 1930] [5]; Fejer de Buck, Rome [6]; [Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878–1955), Rome–Florence]; sold to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, September 16, 1938, K534; gift to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, June 29, 1939; deaccessioned and returned to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, October 15, 1952; donated in 1954 to the University of Arizona; returned to the Kress Foundation in 1957 [7]; given to the NCMA, December 19, 1961.

[1] According to Benson 1924, cat. no. 41, 60: “Acquired in Milan as by Titian from the family of del Mayno.” This could be the family of Conte Carlo Giasone del Maino (1798–1894).

[2] The acquisition date of the painting is unknown, but it was loaned by the Holford collection to an 1895 exhibition in London.

[3] Loaned to the 1895 London exhibition as a painting by Cariani. According to Benson’s 1924 catalog of the Holford collection, it was located at Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, UK.

[4] Modigliani, listed as the buyer in the annotated auction catalog, possibly refers to Ettore Modigliani (1873–1947), director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1908–1934, who had a special interest in the Venetian school.

[5] The painting was loaned by Adolfo Werner, Milan to the exhibition of Italian art at the Royal Academy of Arts, January 1–March 8, 1930.

[6] Contini Bonacossi purchased two other paintings from Fejer de Buck: Kress Collection K306, now in the National Gallery, Washington D.C. and Kress Collection K197, now at Berea College. According to Tomasso Tovaglieri, I Contini Bonacossi e l’arte barocca (Turin: Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura della Compagnia di San Paolo, 2022), 43, Fejer de Buck was a Flemish collector in Rome in the 1920s.

[7] This is according to some Kress archival notes on K534 (present painting) preserved in the curatorial file (NCMA). Berenson 1957 notes that Kress K543 was at the University of Arizona, Kress Collection. This information does not appear in any of Shapley’s catalog entries nor in the Kress Collection Digital Archive. For another Kress painting with a similar history, see: https://www.kressfoundation.org/kress-collection/artwork/8905d50fb84974620b6a518875852beb6c6101a391be605c446b372932b0ea6a.
Published ReferencesExhibition of Venetian Art (exhibition catalogue) (London: The New Gallery, 1894–95), cat. no. 27, 6 (as Cariani).

G[eorg] Gronau, “L’art Vénitien à Londres, a Propos de l’Exposition de la New Gallery: III,” Gazette des beaux-arts: la doyenne des revues d'art 13 (1895), 427–440 at 438 (as Cariani).

Bernhard Berenson, The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, with an index to their works, 3rd ed. (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 100 (as Dorchester House, Portrait of a Man).

Bernhard Berenson, The Study and Criticism of Italian Art (London: George Bell and Sons, 1901), 134–146 at 140.

Lionello Venturi, Giorgione e il Giorgionismo (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1913), 232–236 at 235.

The Venetian School: Pictures by Titian and His Contemporaries (London: Privately Printed for the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1915), cat. no. 40, 54, pl. XXX.

Catalogue of Pictures and other Objects of Art Selected from the Collections of Mr. Robert Holford [1808–1892], Mainly from Westonbirt in Gloucestershire, Winter Exhibition 1921–1922 (exhibition catalogue) (London: Privately printed for the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1921), cat. no. 16, 19 (as Cariani).

Adolfo Venturi, “Girolamo Romanino nelle raccolte Holford a Londra, Harrach a Vienna,” L’arte: rivista di storia dell'arte medioevale e moderna e d’arte decorativa 26 (January 1923), 30–32 at 30–31, fig. 1.

Robert Benson, The Holford Collection: selected from twelve illuminated manuscripts at Dorchester House and one hundred and seven pictures at Westonbirt in Gloucestershire (London: Privately printed for Sir George Holford and members of the Burlington Fine Arts Club who subscribed at the Winter Exhibition, 1921–1922, 1924), cat. no. 41, 60, pl. XLIV (as Cariani).

Catalogue of Important Pictures of the Italian School; Being the First Portion of the Collection of the Late Sir George Lindsay Holford; Removed from Dorchester House, Park Lane and Westonbirt, Gloucestershire; Sold by Auction by Messrs Christe, Manson & Woods, July 15, 1927 (London: Christie’s, 1927), 35, lot 91 (as Girolamo Romanino).

A[dolfo] Venturi, Studi dal vero: attraverso le raccolte artistiche d’Europa (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1927), 293–294, fig. 184.

A[dolfo] Venturi, Storia dell’arte Italiana: La pittura del cinquecento, Parte III, vol. IX (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1928), 846, fig. 585 (as Girolamo Romanino).

Exhibition of Italian Art, 1200–1900 (exhibition catalogue) (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1930), cat. no. 409, 227, (painting lent by Adolfo Werner from Milan).

Lord Balniel and Kenneth Clark, ed., A Commemorative Catalogue of the Exhibition of Italian Art Held in the Galleries of the Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, January–March, 1930 (exhibition catalogue) (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), cat. no. 396 (409), 137.

Fernanda Wittgens, “Pictures from British Collections at the Italian Exhibition,” Apollo 11, no. 62 (February 1930), 73–91 at 86, 88, fig. 8.

Antonio Morassi, “La Mostra d’Arte Italiana a Londra,” Emporium 71, no. 423 (March 1930), 131–157 at 150.

Günter Troche, “Giovanni Cariani als Bildnismaler,” Pantheon: Monatsschrift für Freunde und Sammler der Kunst 9 (January 1932), no. 23, 1–7 at 7.

Joh[annes] Wilde, “Neue Literatur über venezianische Malerei 16. Jahrhundert” in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 1, no. 5/6 (1932), 381.

A. M. Brizio, “Recensione a Troche, 1932,” L’Arte 3, no. 4 (July 1932), 338–354 at 344.

Ernst Günter Troche, “Giovanni Cariani,” Jahrbuch der Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 55 (1934), 97–125 at 122, no. 57.

Giuseppe Fiocco, Giovanni Antonio Pordenone (Udine: La Panarie, 1939), 145 (as not Pordenone).

Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1941), cat. no. 419, 32 (as Cariani, Portrait of a Gentleman).

Luca Luciano Trevisan, Giorgione, vol. 1 (Venice: Emiliana, 1950), 336 (as a portrait of Marquis Ercole I d’Este, by Giorgione).

Luciano Gallina, Giovanni Cariani (Bergamo: Edizioni Documenti Lombardi, 1954), 126.

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: The Venetian School, vol. 1 (London: The Phaidon Press, 1957), 55 (as Cariani, in the University of Arizona S.H. Kress Collection).

Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento: La scuola veneta (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1958), 57.

Fern Rusk Shapley with W. R. Valentiner, The Samuel H. Kress Collection (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1960), 90, illus. (b-w) 91.

P. Dessy, “Giovanni Busi detto Cariani,” tesi di laurea, Università degli Studi di Padova, 1960/61, 100, 151, 157, 167.

Maria Luisa Ferrari, Il Romanino (Milano: Bramante, 1961), 312.

P. Dessy, “Inediti del Cariani,” Arte Veneta (1961), 234.

R. F. C., “La collezione Kress di opere della Rinascenza italiana al North Carolina Museum,” Emporium 134, no. 802 (October 1961), 172–176 at 175.

Paul Wescher, “Die Kress-Schenkung für Raleigh,” Pantheon: Internationale Zeitschrift für Kunst 21, no. 1 (January/February 1963), 8–13 at 13, illus. (b-w) 13.

“Acquisitions,” North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 4, nos. 2 & 3 (Winter–Spring 1964), 57.

Fern Rusk Shapley with W. R. Valentiner, The Samuel H. Kress Collection (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1965), 90, illus. (b-w) 91.

Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools XV - XVI Century, vol. 2 (London: The Phaidon Press, 1968), 169, illus. fig. 404.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 45.

Giovanni Mariacher, “Giovanni Cariani,” in I pittori bergamaschi: Il Cinquecento, I (Bergamo: Poligrafice Bolis, 1975), 293–3, n57.

Rodolfo Pallucchini and Francesco Rossi, Giovanni Cariani (Bergamo: Credito Bergamasco, 1983), 86, 136–7, illus. 83.

Robert Lee Humber: A Collector Creates (exhibition catalogue), ed. Jo Allen and Gil Leebrick (Greenville, NC: East Carolina University, 1996), illus. (b-w) 37.

Jolyn Key, “Taking It a Step Beyond: Fayetteville Museum of Arts Beyond Likeness Exibit [sic],” Up & Coming Magazine (July 22–August 4, 1998), illus. (b-w) 17.

Angelica Daneo, ed., Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance (exhibition catalogue) (Denver, : Denver Art Museum, 2016), cat. no. 38, illus. (color) 98–99.

Kress Collection Digital Archive, National Gallery of Art, accessed 7/31/25, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3552.
Exhibition HistoryLondon, The New Gallery, Regent Street, “Exhibition of Venetian Art,” 1894–1895, cat. no. 27 (as Cariani).

London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, “The Venetian School: Pictures by Titian and His Contemporaries,” 1915, cat. no. 40.

London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, “Pictures and other Objects of Art Selected from the Collections of Mr. Robert Holford [1808–1892] Mainly from Westonbirt in Gloucestershire,” Winter Exhibition 1921–1922, cat. no. 16.

London, Royal Academy of Arts, “Exhibition of Italian Art 1200–1900,” January 1–March 8, 1930, cat. no. 409.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, “A Gift to North Carolina: Italian Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection,” February 5–April 24, 1994.

Hickory, NC, The Hickory Museum of Art, “Beyond Likeness: Contemporary Considerations of the Portrait,” November 1–December 31, 1997; Wilmington, NC, St. John’s Museum of Art, April 30–June 28, 1998; Fayetteville, NC, Fayetteville Museum of Art, July 11–August 30, 1998; Asheville, NC, Asheville Art Museum, September 17, 1998–January 2, 1999; Greenville, NC, Greenville Museum of Art, January 14–February 28, 1999.

Denver, CO, Denver Art Museum, “Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance,” October 2, 2016–February 12, 2017; Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, March 4–June 18, 2017, cat. no. 38.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Venice and the Ottoman Empire,” September 28, 2024–January 5, 2025.
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