One of the greatest portraits in the National Gallery in London, Titian’s familiarly called Man with the Blue Sleeve (ca 1509), was for some three centuries thought to represent Ludovico Ariosto. Reproduced in editions of Orlando furioso, Ariosto’s most famous work, it became, for generations of readers, the best-known image of the poet. This painting is not, however, likely to feature in any books published this year, the 500th anniversary of the first edition of Ariosto’s epic poem as, after years of uncertainty about the Ariosto connection, the sitter was identified in 2012 as a member of the Barbarigo, an aristocratic Venetian family.

   
Titian, Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo ca 1510 (National Gallery, London) and as reproduced on an editon of Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso. Ed. Lanfranco Caretti. (Turin, 1966)

Another painting in the National Gallery, Palma Vecchio’s Portrait of a Poet (ca 1516),  has also, at various times, been proposed as a portrait of Ariosto. When it was acquired by the gallery in 1860 it was also thought to be a portrait of Ariosto by Titian. A few years later, however, it was recognised as a work by Palma Vecchio and later attributions tended to alternate between the two artists, though other artists have also been proposed. As there is no written evidence that Ariosto ever sat for Palma Vecchio, the identification of the sitter as Ariosto was dropped each time the work was attributed to him, only to reappear when reattributed to Titian, as it was known from contemporary or near-contemporary sources that he had painted a portrait of Ariosto. 

Palma Vecchio, Portrait of a Poet. ca 1516. The National Gallery, London.

The Palma Vecchio painting is thought to represent a poet because the arm of the sitter is resting on a book and his head is framed by laurel branches,  the  traditional attribute of the poet and an allusion to Petrarch’s Laura. Though there is no consensus among scholars, it is usually said to have been painted around 1516, the date of the first publication of Orlando furioso. Hence the temptation to identify the sitter as Ariosto even though the poet was by then in his mid-forties whereas the portrait is obviously that of a much younger man. There has also been a suggestion that the painting may not necessarily be a portrait and, worse, that the laurel may be a symbol of charity or faith, rather than poetry.

As Titian’s portrait of Ariosto mentioned by contemporary sources, has never been identified with any certainty, other portraits by the artist have at times been proposed. They include a portrait in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, one attributed to Titian, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a portrait discovered in 1933 in Casa Oriani, Ferrara and attributed, in quick succession, to Dosso Dossi (by Giuseppe Agnelli) and to Titian (by Georg Gronau).

Titian, Portrait of Ariosto. Present whereabouts unknown. [Image from Fototeca della Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna]

Gronau elegantly demolishes the attribution to Dossi and in his description of the portrait he amusingly says: ‘The painter, with true insight, chose this not very usual “lost” profile, for only in such position could he do full justice to the very characteristic and beautiful curve of the nose…If he had moved the head ever so slightly towards the front, the line of the nose would have been indistinct’. This portrait was lost in the Second World War, but there are two copies of it in the Biblioteca Ariostea di Ferrara, one by Carlo Bononi (1569-1632), the other an anonymous 17th-century work. More importantly, another copy was painted by Cristofano dell’Altissimo (ca 1552-1568), a Florentine artist who copied numerous portraits of famous men for Cosimo I de’Medici, now all in the Galleria degli Uffizi. Giorgio Vasari used this portrait in a fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio where Ariosto is seen in conversation with Pietro Aretino (also based on a portrait by Titian).

 
Left, Cristofano dell’Altissimo (1525-1605),  Ludovico Ariosto, before 1568 (Image from Wikimedia Commons); Right, Detail from Giorgio Vasari, ‘The entry of Leo X into Florence’, Palazzo Vecchio, reproduced in Palazzo Vecchio: officina di opere e di ingegni, a cura di Carlo Francini. (Milan, 2007) LF.31.b.3647

The features of the poet – high forehead, hair receding at the top, aquiline nose, thin lips, lively eyes, and straggling beard – correspond to those of the woodcut after a lost drawing by Titian (engraved by Francesco Marcolini), published in the 1532 edition of Orlando furioso, the last revised by the poet

Portrait of Ludovico Ariosto, after Titian. Woodcut, with a decorative border by Francesco de Nanto, from Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (Ferrara, 1532)  C.20.c.11

This woodcut, the most reliable likeness of Ariosto, has been described as the archetypal portrait of him and was copied in a variety of media and in later editions of his works. Two examples will suffice – the bronze medal produced by Pastorino de’ Pastorini (1508-1592), one of the most prolific medallists of the Italian Renaissance  and the frontispiece in the monumental 1730 edition of the poem.

 
Above: Bust of Ludovico Ariosto. Cast bronze medal (obverse) designed by Pastorino de’Pastorini, ca 1555 (The British Museum) Below: Frontispiece portrait of Ariosto by C. Orsolini from vol.1 of Orlando furioso (Venice, 1730) 835.m.11

Traditions, however, die hard and the identification of Ariosto with Titian’s ‘Man with the Blue Sleeve’ is still strong in popular imagination as can be seen from a recent edition of Italo Calvino’s retelling of  Orlando furioso in which the introductory double-spread illustration by Grazia Nidasio wittily combines the portrait of ‘Ariosto’, his blue sleeve resting on manuscripts of his work while he is adding corrections to the proofs of his text, with that of a mischievous-looking Calvino, and various knights on horseback riding over the Palazzo Estense in Ferrara.

Chris Michaelides, Curator Romance Collections

References/Further reading:

Giuseppe Agnelli, ‘Ritratti dell’Ariosto’, Rassegna d’arte, 1922. P.P.1931.plg

Giuseppe Agnelli, ‘Il ritratto dell’Ariosto di Dosso Dossi’, Emporium, lxxvii (1933), 275-282

Georg Gronau, ‘Titian’s Ariosto’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs,  Vol.63, no. 368 (Nov. 1933), 194-203.  PP.1931.pcs

Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian: complete ed. Vol.2. The Portraits. (London, 1971). fL71/4158

Cecil Gould, National Gallery Catalogues: the Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools. (London, 1987). YK. 1994.b.9553

Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio. (Cambridge, 1992). q92/05892

Paul Joannides, Titian: the assumption of genius  (New Haven; London, 2001) LB.31.b.23190

David Alan Brown [et al.], Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian painting. (New Haven, Conn.; London, 2006). LC.31.b.2948

Orlando furioso di Ludovico Ariosto, raccontato da Italo Calvino, illustrato da Grazia Nidasio. (Milan, 2009) YF.2012.a.5411

A. Mazzotta, ‘A ‘gentiluomo da Ca’ Barbarigo’ by Titian in the National Gallery, London’, The Burlington Magazine, CLIV, 2012, 12-19. PP.1931.pcs

Giovanni C.F. Villa (ed.), Palma il Vecchio : lo sguardo della bellezza. (Milan, 2015). YF.2015.b.1072

Gianni Venturi, ‘Ludovico Ariosto: portrait d’un poète dans les arts et dans les arts visuels’, in  L’Arioste et les arts, 61-72.  (Paris, 2012).  YF.2012.b.2238.