Portrait of a Man

Verona had spent eight years as an imperial city when it came back under Venetian rule in 1517, and this portrait was painted there about three years after that. Francesco Torbido was born in Venice and trained, the early sources say, with Giorgione, before moving to Verona and becoming the pupil of the old Veronese painter Liberale, who made him his heir. In Verona they called him il Moro, the Moor, and the nickname followed him into the books. What he brought over from Venice is in the greenish ground the man stands out from, a habit of Giorgione's studio. Nobody has identified the sitter. Torbido's securely documented paintings are few, which is what makes the painted slip of paper at the bottom worth looking at, lettered TVRBIDVS V FACIEBAT, was making it, the imperfect tense that Renaissance painters borrowed from the signatures Pliny recorded on ancient Greek works.