Portrait of Giovanni Borgherini and Trifone Gabriele

Giorgio Vasari, the painter who wrote the lives of the Italian artists, describes a picture he saw in the Florentine palace of the Borgherini family, a portrait of young Giovanni Borgherini with his teacher from Venice, painted by Giorgione. Researchers at the Alte Pinakothek now believe this canvas is that picture. The older man's striking features match contemporary portraits of Trifone Gabriele, a Venetian scholar, and written sources confirm he tutored Giovanni while the boy lived in Venice. He turns and looks at us over his shoulder, a little put out by the interruption, while his pupil listens, absorbed, to a lesson on measuring heaven and earth with a compass and an astrolabe. Scans of the canvas found three earlier designs underneath, among them the boy Jesus with the scholars in the Temple and an Arcadian landscape. Until recently the painting hung without a firm name in the Green Gallery of the Munich Residence. The National Gallery of Art in Washington has its own double portrait linked to the same passage in Vasari.