Portrait of a Bearded Man

Jacopo Bassano is remembered above all for the rustic religious scenes and landscapes he painted with his family workshop at Bassano del Grappa, and his portraits are comparatively few — which makes this likeness the more valuable as evidence. Its sitter is unidentified, and the canvas has the immediacy of a study made from life rather than a formal commission: the man is caught in the act of listening or speaking, his head turned and his mouth slightly open. Bassano’s biographer Carlo Ridolfi noted that the artist was “valued for his portraits,” which were “naturalistically rendered” thanks to his habit of working directly from the model; the painting bears that out. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.