Retrato del humanista Giovanni Paolo Cornaro

The inscription does the introducing. It gives the sitter's name, what he was, his age, 32, and the year, 1561. Giovanni Paolo Cornaro belonged to one of the great Venetian families and was known around the city as dalle Anticaglie, the man of the old stones. Rome and the countryside around it were being dug over for antiquities through the middle of the 16th century, and marbles travelled north by the boatload into Venetian courtyards and garden loggias. Cornaro was one of the buyers, and in that generation a Venetian gentleman could build a reputation on what he had acquired and identified as readily as on office or trade. So Tintoretto gave him the evidence. He painted him half length, in dark clothes, with his left hand resting on the head of an antique marble woman.