Portrait of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere (c. 1476–82): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere (c. 1476–82) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pedro Berruguete (Castilian, c. 1445/1450-1503).

The work and its context

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

Spanish artist Pedro Berruguete spent a decade in Italy in the 1470s and 1480s, including a period in Rome during which he painted Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere from life. Here, the pope raises his hand in a gesture of benediction, blessing the viewer while meeting their gaze. Using white highlights to represent the glittering luminosity of the bejeweled garments, Berruguete accentuates Sixtus IV’s sumptuous attire, including the triregnum, or ceremonial triple crown and symbol of the papacy.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere
• Date: c. 1476–82
• Creator attribution: Pedro Berruguete (Castilian, c. 1445/1450-1503)
• Culture: Spain
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood, transferred to canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 95.5 x 76 x 5 cm (37 5/8 x 29 15/16 x 1 15/16 in.); Unframed: 70.2 x 51.4 cm (27 5/8 x 20 1/4 in.)
• Collection: P - Spanish before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.815

A detail from the museum

James Jackson Jarves (1818–1888)—famed art critic and one of the first Americans to amass a collection of medieval, Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque paintings from Italy—owned this painting in the late 19th century.

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.
• G. U. "The Holden Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 4, no. 2 (1917): 19-34.

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.