Portrait of a Man (c. 1620): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Man (c. 1620) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tanzio da Varallo (Italian, c. 1575/80–1635).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This portrait of an unknown man includes a detailed representation of a rapier, a sword worn with civilian dress and used in duels. On the basis of style, the rapier in this painting belonged to a distinctive group of sword hilts decorated between about 1570 and 1600. It was probably made in northern Italy.The son of a Piedmontese architect, Tanzio spent most of his life in northern Italy, but worked briefly in Rome and southern Italy, mainly Naples. These trips brought him under the influence of Caravaggio, whose dramatic realism Tanzio integrated into his own elegant, decorative style.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Man
• Date: c. 1620
• Creator attribution: Tanzio da Varallo (Italian, c. 1575/80–1635)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 125 x 99.5 x 7 cm (49 3/16 x 39 3/16 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 97.8 x 72.2 cm (38 1/2 x 28 7/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1985.143

A detail from the museum

Dashing accessories enliven this portrait, including a rapier with an elegantly spiraling guard, produced exclusively in North Italy between 1570 and 1600.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Townsend, Richard P., in Marco Bona Castellotti et al.,Tanzio da Varallo: realismo, fervore e contemplazione in un pittore del Seicento. Exh. cat. Milan, Palazzo Reale; published by Milan: F. Motta, 2000.
• Patrick Matthiesen, letter to Ann Tzeutschler Lurie, Aug. 12, 1985, in CMA curatorial file.
• Patrick Matthiesen, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 15, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.