Portrait of Marco Pasqualigo

A Venetian patrician learned to govern away from the lagoon. The Republic sent its young noblemen out to the mainland cities it ruled, to hold office there for a term, and in 1588 Marco Pasqualigo, 24 years old, was serving as an official in Brescia. That is the year of this small portrait, under half a metre high, which the museum gives to Jacopo Tintoretto's son Domenico and calls a sensitive likeness.

Taken in the 2015 robbery at Castelvecchio and recovered the following year, the picture has a twin in the Museo Correr in Venice. The inscription across the top of that version, legible again since a cleaning in 2003, names his post in Brescia and the year. Castelvecchio counts the Venice canvas a workshop copy, while the Correr catalogues its own as Domenico's work.