The ''Portrait of Carlo de' Medici'' is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master
Andrea Mantegna, executed in 1466. It is now housed in the
Uffizi Gallery of
Florence.
History
Little is known about the painting's origins, and currently the most credited hypothesis is that it would portray
Carlo de' Medici
Carlo di Cosimo de' Medici (1428 or 1430 – May 29, 1492) was an Italian priest. A member of the powerful Medici family, he became a senior clergyman and collector.
Early life
Born in Florence, he was the Legitimacy (family law), illegiti ...
, an illegitimate son of
Cosimo de' Medici the Elder and a
Circassian concubine, as hinted by the subject's intense blue eyes. In 1912 a copy of the portrait was included in a genealogy of the
House of Medici. This is however in contrast with the identification of Carlo as a character in
Filippino Lippi's ''
Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist
The ''Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist'' is a fresco cycle by the Italian Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi and his assistants, executed between 1452 and 1465. It is located in the Great Chapel (''Cappella Maggiore'') of the Cat ...
'' in the
Cathedral of Prato. Also the attribution to Mantegna was not immediate, as for a long time the painting was thought to be by
Domenico Veneziano
Domenico Veneziano (c. 1410 – May 15, 1461) was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance, active mostly in Perugia and Tuscany.
Little is known of his birth, though he is thought to have been born in Venice, hence his last name. He then moved ...
.
The work has been dated from 1459–1460, when Mantegna arrived in
Mantua and was commissioned numerous official portraits (the subject has been also identified as Ludovico Gonzaga, bishop of Mantua), and 1466, when the painter perhaps travelled to Florence.
Description
The painting shows the subject from a three-quarter view, an innovation brought in Italy through Flemish masters in the late 15th century; previously profiles, in the ancient Roman tradition, were preferred.
The subject is dark-skinned and wears the garments of a
protonotary apostolic
In the Roman Catholic Church, protonotary apostolic (PA; Latin: ''protonotarius apostolicus'') is the title for a member of the highest non-episcopal college of prelates in the Roman Curia or, outside Rome, an honorary prelate on whom the pop ...
, a position which Carlo held from 1463. The official nature of the painting explains the absence of any psychological element and the attention to details such as the dress and the hat.
Sources
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{{Andrea Mantegna
1460s paintings
Paintings by Andrea Mantegna
Paintings in the collection of the Uffizi