Giovanni Emo

This Venetian gentleman has carried the name Giovanni Emo for a long time, but the truth is nobody is certain who he was. Other names have been proposed over the years, and the identification stays open. What is clear is the way Bellini presents him, seen from the chest up against a plain black ground, turned slightly so the light rakes across a face that is not young. There are creases at the eyes, a shadow of stubble along the jaw, a set to the mouth that gives nothing away. Bellini was the leading painter of Venice around 1495, and he brought to portraits like this a quiet, exact realism that later Venetians, Titian among them, would build on. The rose-pink and gold of the cloak is the one warm note against all that black.