Retrato de un hombre

Around 1555 a young Venetian sat for Veronese wrapped in a heavy lynx fur, and the way he holds himself was a fashion in its own right. A generation earlier the writer Castiglione had described the perfect courtier's great secret as sprezzatura, a studied carelessness that makes high rank look effortless. That is what the sitter performs here. The open gaze, the loose easy posture, the air of a man with nothing to prove. Veronese was still in his twenties, recently arrived from the mainland town of Verona and building the reputation that would soon put him on Venice's grandest ceilings. The fur alone says the man was rich. Wearing it as if he had barely noticed it was the harder thing to paint.