Portrait of Virginio Cesarini

The young man in this portrait belonged to the small circle around Galileo. Virginio Cesarini was a Roman nobleman and poet who joined the Lincean Academy, the scientific society that counted Galileo among its members, and Galileo thought enough of him to dedicate his book The Assayer to him in 1623. He was barely into his twenties when Domenichino painted him, already carrying the illness that would kill him. You can read it in the pale skin and the flush high on the cheeks, the mark of the tuberculosis that took him in 1624, when he was 29. He wears the dark dress of a man in church service, and the loose, warm handling of the paint has reminded viewers of Venetian portraits by Titian.