Portrait of His Brother's Family

Across the top of this canvas runs a Latin couplet. Roughly, it says that Licinio here portrays his brother with his whole family, and by his art prolongs their life, and his own. Beneath it the painter signed a second time, B. Lycinii opus, the work of Bernardino Licinio. It was painted in Venice around 1535. The brother is the bearded man in the black cap, Arrigo, and his wife Agnese sits at the centre holding the baby. The young man with a small white statue is their eldest son, Fabio, a goldsmith and engraver, and what he holds is a model of the Belvedere Torso, the ancient marble fragment in the Vatican that artists of the time copied constantly. Scholars agree that Bernardino arranged the group and painted the faces of Arrigo, Agnese and Fabio. Whose hand is behind the other children's heads is still debated.