Portrait of a Prelate (mid-1500s): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Prelate (mid-1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Girolamo da Carpi (Italian, c. 1501–1556).

The work and its context

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

Girolamo da Carpi, a court artist from Ferrara, was influenced by the grace and intellectual artificiality found in Italian Mannerist art, seen in the flowing S-curve of the sitter's clothing and his delicate and attenuated fingers. The sitter's dress identifies him as a prelate, a high-ranking member of the Catholic clergy. His costume includes a dark mantel with red lining over a gauzy, white rochet and the three-cornered hat, called a biretta. In his right hand he holds a book whose cover displays an elephant, standing in water, looking at the moon. This motif symbolized purity, and the sitter's virtue is further emphasized through the book's inscription, MUNDOS LIBENTER ASPICIT, which means, "The moon beholds the pure with pleasure." While several noble Renaissance households used this design for their family emblems, none have yet proven related to the prelate in this painting and so his identity remains unknown.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Prelate
• Date: mid-1500s
• Creator attribution: Girolamo da Carpi (Italian, c. 1501–1556)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 171 x 138.5 x 12.5 cm (67 5/16 x 54 1/2 x 4 15/16 in.); Unframed: 140.4 x 108 cm (55 1/4 x 42 1/2 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1947.210

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.
• Francis, Henry. "Venetian Art and Its Field of Influence." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 38, no. 2 (February 1951): 21-27, 30-35, 38-40
• Francis, Henry Sayles. Venetian Tradition: Catalogue of the Exhibition. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1956.

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.