Portrait of Vincenzo Cappello

Vincenzo Cappello died in 1541 and was buried in the Venetian church of Santa Maria Formosa, whose façade still carries his statue. He had commanded Venice's fleet against the Ottomans more than once, at the battle of Preveza in 1538 among others, and ended his career as a procurator of San Marco, one of the highest offices in the Republic. Venice went on wanting his face long after he was gone. Titian had painted him as a commander, white-bearded, in armour with a red cloak and a baton, and that image was repeated in several versions.

This canvas belongs to that afterlife. The Louvre dates it to the last quarter of the 16th century, at least a generation after Cappello's death, and gives it to Palma il Giovane. Earlier owners took it for a Titian, and in 1997 the scholar William Rearick published it as Tintoretto. For a time the sitter was misnamed too, as Cappello's grandson Nicolò, who commanded a galley in 1576. The collector Baron Basile de Schlichting left the painting to the Louvre in 1914.