Copy of a Portrait of a Venetian Patrician

Eilif Peterssen was a Norwegian painter who spent formative years studying in Munich and Italy, where he made copies of Old Master paintings as part of his training. This 1875 copy of a Venetian patrician portrait demonstrates the important role that copying canonical works played in 19th-century art education — requiring painters to analyze and internalize the technical strategies of great predecessors. Peterssen would later develop as a major Norwegian painter of historical and religious subjects. The National Museum in Oslo holds this copy alongside his original works, documenting his formative European training.

Peterssen's copy aims to reproduce the distinctive qualities of Venetian 16th-century portraiture — the warm, atmospheric background, the direct psychological address of the sitter, and the rich, jewel-like rendering of costume and surface.