一位演员的肖像

The man holds a theatrical mask and looks out with a performer's directness. He was almost certainly an actor of the commedia dell'arte, the improvised popular theatre of Italy, and people have long argued over exactly which one. The strongest guess is Tristano Martinelli, the comedian who made the Harlequin figure famous and was received at courts across Europe. Domenico Fetti painted him around 1621 in Mantua, where Fetti worked for the Gonzaga dukes. The earliest record of the picture, in a French inventory, simply calls it Harlequin holding a mask. Catherine the Great bought it for the Hermitage in 1772, when a Paris collection was broken up and sold on to Russia.