Portrait of an Old Man (mid-1500s): Art, History and Details

Portrait of an Old Man (mid-1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giulio Campi (Italian, c. 1500–1572).

The work and its context

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

Part of a distinguished family of Northern northern Italian painters, Campi depicts his sitter with an unidealized face dominated by carefully observed wrinkles. He stares out intently while grasping what may be a letter with its paper seal broken in his right hand. Despite this intense gaze the figure does not establish a lively connection with the viewer, and his mood remains distant and reserved, in keeping with Renaissance ideas about elegant comportment. Though his costume appears plain, the sumptuous black fabric was indicative of high status in some parts of Europe. --Michele Frederick (December 2011)

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of an Old Man
• Date: mid-1500s
• Creator attribution: Giulio Campi (Italian, c. 1500–1572)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 120.7 x 91.4 x 11.4 cm (47 1/2 x 36 x 4 1/2 in.); Unframed: 92.4 x 63.5 cm (36 3/8 x 25 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.794

Collection credit

Holden Collection

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.
• Rubinstein-Bloch, Stella. Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings, Etc. Presented by Mrs. Liberty E. Holden to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1917.
• Moro, Franco and Filippo Maria Ferro. Caravaggio sconosciuto: le origini del Merisi, eccellente disegnatore, maestro di ritratti e di cose naturali. Torino : Umberto Allemandi, 2016.

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.