Portrait of a Venetian Admiral

Around 1570, when this portrait was made, Venice was sliding into war. The Ottomans had landed on Cyprus, the republic's rich eastern colony, and within a year a Christian fleet would meet the Turkish one at Lepanto in one of the largest galley battles ever fought. A Venetian admiral in those years was no ceremonial figure. He commanded men and ships in a fight the city feared it might lose. Tintoretto ran the busiest portrait workshop in Venice and painted many such officers of state, usually cutting the figure in close so the face and the hand carry the picture. Here the sitter turns toward us in his dark clothes, the authority all in the look. His name has not come down with the canvas, which now hangs in the National Museum in Warsaw.