Portrait of a Man
Andrea Mantegna·c. 1470
Historical Context
Andrea Mantegna's Portrait of a Man, painted around 1470, demonstrates the master's formidable skills as a portraitist alongside his better-known achievements in narrative painting and decoration. This work has been transferred from panel to canvas to hardboard — a complex conservation history that attests to its value over centuries. Mantegna's portraits, though fewer in number than his religious and historical works, share the same sculptural precision and psychological intensity.
Technical Analysis
Mantegna's tempera technique achieves the hard, precise modeling characteristic of all his work. Despite the multiple transfers, the portrait retains its characteristic firm contours and clear, cool tonality, with the face rendered with the lapidary precision that reflects Mantegna's study of ancient Roman sculpture.
Provenance
Gaál, Balaton Földvár, Hungary, before 1906;[1] Dr. Ludwig Keleman, Budapest; sold 1929 by his widow to (Jacques Seligmann & Co., Inc., Paris and New York);[2] sold May 1950 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] Fern Rusk Shapley, _Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century_, London, 1968: 25. [2] The sale by Keleman's widow is confirmed by Alfred Frankfurter in his documentation of the painting for Germain Seligman in 1938, copy in NGA curatorial files. [3] Germain Seligman proposed a sale to the Kress Foundation of five works of art, including Andrea Mantegna's "Portrait of Janus Pannonius," in a letter of 10 May 1950; the Foundation paid for them the following day (copy in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1691).
