Head of a Bishop

The museum dates this head to 1566, the last full year of Domenico Brusasorci's life. He died in Verona in March 1567, and in 1566 he also painted the altarpiece for the high altar of the church of San Lorenzo. The man here wears a bishop's vestments and has a strikingly alert gaze. The museum thinks he is probably a fragment cut from a large altarpiece, like a second prelate's head shown with him, a recent gift from a private collector.

Old sources say Domenico liked to give the saints in his pictures the faces of friends and people of his own day, which would explain why this head looks so much like a portrait. Who the man was is not recorded. Domenico had painted bishops before, a set of four imagined portraits of early bishops of Verona in the sacristy of Santo Stefano. This head came to the museum from the Monga collection.