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Portrait of a Man
Tanzio da Varallo (Italian, c. 1575/80–1635)
c. 1620
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 125 x 99.5 x 7 cm (49 3/16 x 39 3/16 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 97.8 x 72.2 cm (38 1/2 x 28 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This portrait of an unknown man includes a detailed representation of a rapier, a sword worn with civilian dress and used in duels. On the basis of style, the rapier in this painting belonged to a distinctive group of sword hilts decorated between about 1570 and 1600. It was probably made in northern Italy.The son of a Piedmontese architect, Tanzio spent most of his life in northern Italy, but worked briefly in Rome and southern Italy, mainly Naples. These trips brought him under the influence of Caravaggio, whose dramatic realism Tanzio integrated into his own elegant, decorative style.
