Portrait of a Venetian Senator

In 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte's government decided that the paintings piled up in Paris, many of them confiscated during the Revolution, should be shared out among museums in the French provinces. Lille was one of the cities on the list, and this portrait was part of what the state sent there that year. It then had a rough century. At some point it was cut down to an oval, and around 1850 it was squared off again at its present size, which leaves it about 20 centimetres shorter and 30 narrower than when Tintoretto painted it in Venice, sometime in the 1570s. Nobody knows who the sitter is. His crimson velvet robe, edged with spotted ermine, marks him as a man holding high office in the Venetian state. Tintoretto painted him from slightly below and spent his care on the lined, bearded face, while the hands and the heavy sleeves are laid in with a few quick strokes.