Portrait of a Man

Around 1500 the way Italians painted a face was changing, and Giovanni Bellini, the grand old man of Venetian painting, was part of that change. For generations a portrait had shown a sitter in strict profile, flat as a head on a coin. Here the young man turns slightly towards us, three-quarters on, set against a bank of soft cloud and pale sky, so he reads as a person occupying the same air we do. The panel is small, about the size of a sheet of writing paper. We do not know his name. Bellini gives him dark clothes, dark hair and a steady, unhurried look.