A Jesuit

In 1537 Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions were in Venice, ordained there and waiting for a ship to the Holy Land. War between the Republic and the Ottomans meant no pilgrim ship sailed that year, so they went to Rome instead, and the Society of Jesus was approved three years later. By the time Tintoretto painted this small bust, 50 centimetres by 43, the order had colleges across Italy. The museum calls the sitter simply a Jesuit and dates the canvas no more precisely than the second half of the 16th century. No name has ever been attached to him. In 1606, during the Republic's quarrel with the papacy, Venice expelled the Jesuits, and they were not let back in for half a century.