Portrait of a Poet

In 1516 a poem came off a press in Ferrara that was soon read all over Italy, Lodovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, a long verse romance of knights and enchantments. For a long time this portrait, painted in Venice about the same year, was said to show Ariosto himself. The props invite the idea. Behind the man grows a dense screen of laurel, the plant of Apollo, god of poetry, which is why poets were crowned with its leaves. The National Gallery no longer accepts the name. The sitter looks to be in his late twenties, while Ariosto was past 40, and there is no evidence he ever sat for Palma. The clothes are what date the picture, a padded maroon jacket with blue-striped sleeves, a brown fur cape and a fine gold chain. He holds a rosary and a single glove.