A Venetian Magistrate

In 1772 a clerk inventorying the new Royal Palace in Madrid for Carlos III reached the king's private closet and found three small Venetian portraits hanging there. He entered all three under one number, 97, called them little more than heads, gave their size in varas, the Castilian yard of about 84 centimetres, and set them down as originals by Veronese. This is one of those three. The Prado gives it to Tintoretto now, and dates it no more closely than the 16th century. By 1857, with the royal pictures long since opened to the public as a museum, the sitter no longer had a name. The catalogue of that year lists him as an unknown man with black hair and beard, in an ash-grey garment with a turned-down collar, shown from the chest up.