Portrait of a Young Man

Portrait painting was a significant but secondary aspect of Maratta's career — he was primarily a religious and mythological painter — yet his portraits of Roman aristocrats and ecclesiastics demonstrate the same classical refinement he brought to his other subjects. This 1663 portrait of a young man at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin dates to the decade when Maratta was establishing himself as Rome's leading painter and receiving important commissions from cardinals and noble families. The identity of the sitter is unknown, but the quality of the sitter's clothing and the confident three-quarter-length format suggest an aristocratic or wealthy merchant subject. Maratta's portrait manner draws on Van Dyck's aristocratic formula — relaxed authority, fine fabric, elegant hands — filtered through the Roman classical tradition of Raphael. The Gemäldegalerie Berlin holds an important collection of Italian Baroque portraits alongside its Northern European holdings, and this work contributes to the museum's survey of seventeenth-century portrait conventions.

Three-quarter-length portrait format on canvas allows display of both the face and the costume — the latter a crucial indicator of social status in seventeenth-century portraiture. Maratta renders the sitter's clothing with the same careful attention he gives to drapery in religious paintings. Face and hands receive the finest treatment: soft flesh modeling with cool highlights on the brow and warm mid-tones in the cheeks.