Portrait of a Knight of Malta, Probably Fra Jacopo Salviati

The Sitter: The sitter of this distinguished portrait is a member of a prestigious Catholic military order, the Knights of Malta (also known as the Knights Hospitallers or of St. John of Jerusalem), and wears its distinctive white cross on his garment. He appears to turn toward the viewer, interrupted in his reading of a sheet of paper with crisp folds whose blank side is turned to the viewer. An inscription at the lower right indicates that the portrait was painted in 1566 and that the sitter was twenty-nine years old. The date is of consequence, as it is the year following the so-called Great Siege of Malta, when the Ottoman Empire attacked the Mediterranean island but was repulsed by the Knights, who withstood the attack on their stronghold. The Siege was commemorated as one of the most significant events of the sixteenth century, with Voltaire once writing, "Nothing is better known than this siege, where Suleiman’s fortunes ran aground." (See Bruce Ware Allen, The Great Siege of Malta. The Epic Battle Between the Ottoman Empire and the Knights of St. John, Lebanon, N.H., 2015, p. 266).

A copy of the painting (private collection) has made the identification of the sitter possible. This canvas includes a view of the castle of Magione through a window at the right (see figs. 1–4 above). Built in the eleventh century, this castle and church complex near Poggibonsi (Siena) and on the important pilgrimage route known as the Via Francigena belonged to the Knights beginning in 1312. In 1566, it was under the jurisdiction of Fra Bernardo Salviati (1508–1568), Grand Prior of Rome of the Order of Malta and member of one of the grandest Florentine families. He frequented Magione often, organizing hunting parties there. The Met’s painting almost certainly represents Fra Bernardo’s nephew and heir, Fra Jacopo Salviati, born in 1537 (and thus 29 in 1566), with the copy adding additional visual information about the sitter’s status, family, and attachment to the Order’s centers in Tuscany (written communications, Marquis Cremona-Barbaro and Professor Giovanni Riganelli, 2014).

Members of the Salviati family were enormously important patrons of the arts in Florence and Rome in the sixteenth century. Both Jacopo’s father, Alamanno, and his uncle Cardinal Giovanni were principal patrons of the painter Francesco de’ Rossi, known as Francesco Salviati, who took this name when part of Cardinal Giovanni’s household in Rome. The artist’s only extant letter was written at the end of his life in 1563 to Fra Jacopo Salviati, who was also his patron. (See Francesco Salviati (1510–1563), o la Bella Maniera, ed. Catherine Monbeig Goguel, exh. cat., Villa Medici, Rome. Milan, 1998, p. 26 and passim, and pp. 336–37, no. 143).

The Attribution: This identification also adds weight to the recent attribution of the work to the Florentine Mirabello Cavalori tentatively suggested by Marta Privitera (1995, 1996), and then in a letter by Larry Feinberg (2000). Soon after the painting appeared in Rome in 1910, various authors, including F. Mason Perkins (1914) and Ellis Waterhouse (1930), attributed it to El Greco and suggested that the Spanish artist painted it during his Roman period. Although this attribution was sometimes accepted, once the painting entered The Met scholars began to shift focus to Italian painters, including Jacopino del Conte (who was in Rome from the 1540s; see Salinger 1944) and then the Bolognese painter Bartolomeo Passerotti (Zeri 1986).

D. Stephen Pepper (1995) reoriented the discussion to suggest that the painter came instead from among the so-called Studiolo artists, the group of painters that worked for Duke Francesco I de’ Medici in his private chamber in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence beginning in 1570. Of these, Pepper focused on Girolamo Macchietti (1535–1592), comparing the painted portrait to various drawings attributed to him. Visual connections are even closer with Macchietti’s friend Mirabello Cavalori, as suggested by Privitera and Feinberg. Compelling comparisons can be made to portraits such as a Portrait of a Man (Galleria Palatina, Florence, inv. 1912, no. 238), which combines a similar austerity of presentation with a distinctive play of the hands, and to the figures in Mirabello’s most important works, the two paintings he did for Duke Francesco’s Studiolo. The biographer Giorgio Vasari, who knew the artist and his work firsthand, singled out the quality of his portraits, noting that Cavalori portrayed Francesco I more than once and that many other of his portraits were in "the hands of various gentlemen of Florence" (Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere, vol. 2., New York, 1996, p. 880). It remains to be discovered whether Fra Jacopo commissioned other works from the artists who dominated the Florentine scene in the years following the death of Jacopo Pontormo (1556) and during Agnolo Bronzino’s less productive last years (d. 1573).

Andrea Bayer 2016

Inscription: Dated and inscribed (lower right): ·MDLXVI / ÆTATIS SVÆ / ANN[O] XXIX

?[Sangiorgi, Palazzo Borghese, Rome, 1910]; George Blumenthal, New York (by 1914–41; cat., vol. 1, 1926, pl. LIII, as by El Greco)

New York. World's Fair. "Masterpieces of Art: European & American Paintings, 1500–1900," May–October 1940, no. 110-a (as by El Greco, lent by Mr. and Mrs. George Blumenthal).

Louisville. Speed Art Museum. "Old Masters from the Metropolitan," December 1, 1948–January 23, 1949, no catalogue.

Madison. Memorial Union Gallery, University of Wisconsin. "Old Masters from the Metropolitan," February 15–March 30, 1949, unnumbered cat. (as by Jacopino del Conte [?]).

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. "Old Masters from the Metropolitan," April 24–June 30, 1949, no catalogue.

Palm Beach. Society of the Four Arts. "Portraits, Figures and Landscapes," January 12–February 4, 1951, no. 24 (as by Jacopino del Conte).

Nashville. Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University. "22nd Festival of Music and Art: Metropolitan Museum of Art Loan Exhibition," April 20–August 15, 1951, no catalogue.

Atlanta University. "22nd Festival of Music and Art: Metropolitan Museum of Art Loan Exhibition," September 1, 1951–January 30, 1952, no catalogue.

New Orleans. Dillard University. "22nd Festival of Music and Art: Metropolitan Museum of Art Loan Exhibition," February 1–April 30, 1952, no catalogue.

Hempstead, N. Y. Hofstra College. "Metropolitan Museum Masterpieces," June 26–September 1, 1952, no. 2 (as by Jacopino del Conte (?)).

Pensacola, Fla. Pensacola Art Center. "Opening exhibition," October 26–November 30, 1955, no catalogue.

Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville Art Museum. December 15, 1955–January 30, 1956, no catalogue.

Athens. National Gallery Alexandros Soutzos Museum. "El Greco in Italy and Italian Art," September 17–December 31, 1995, no. 35 (as by Bartolomeo Passerotti).

August L. Mayer. Letter to George Blumenthal. May 25, 1914, rejects the attribution to El Greco and tentatively suggests Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli as the author since El Greco was connected with Bedoli and his brother, Parmigianino.

F. Mason Perkins. "Tre quadri inediti del Greco." Rassegna d'arte 14 (1914), p. 86, ill. p. 83, attributes this portrait to El Greco.

Stella Rubinstein-Bloch. Catalogue of the Collection of George and Florence Blumenthal. Vol. 1, Paintings—Early Schools. Paris, 1926, unpaginated, pl. LIII, attributes it to El Greco and calls it an early work painted during the late 1570s.

Ellis K. Waterhouse. "El Greco's Italian Period." Art Studies: Medieval, Renaissance and Modern 8 (1930), pp. 78, 87, no. 17, fig. 19, attributes it to El Greco and dates it a little later than the portrait of Giulio Clovio, painted in 1571.

M. Legendre and A. Hartmann. Domenikos Theotokopoulos, called El Greco. Paris, 1937, pl. 78, call it a work of El Greco's Roman period.

Margaretta Salinger. "A Portrait of a Knight of Malta." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 2 (January 1944), pp. 164–65, ill., tentatively suggests an attribution to Jacopino del Conte.

Federico Zeri. Letter. October 13, 1949, rejects the attribution to Jacopino, suggesting instead that the picture is by an artist "who knows north Italian painting".

José Camón Aznar. Dominico Greco. Madrid, 1950, vol. 1, p. 133, fig. 77; vol. 2, p. 1392, no. 713, p. 1434, no. 77, tentatively accepts the attribution to Jacopino.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 54.

Harold E. Wethey. El Greco and His School. Princeton, 1962, vol. 2, pp. 204–5, no. X-183, follows Zeri in calling it a north Italian work.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 159, 520, 607.

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, North Italian School. New York, 1986, pp. 51–52, pl. 77, list it as a work by Bartolomeo Passerotti; find the treatment of highlights, the thin layer of colors, and the general tone quite typical of Passerotti; suggest that the composition is derived from Jacopino del Conte; note that the brushwork reflects Venetian technique around the middle of the century, especially that of the young Jacopo Tintoretto.

D. Stephen Pepper in El Greco in Italy and Italian Art. Ed. Nicos Hadjinicolaou. Exh. cat., National Gallery Alexandros Soutzos Museum. Athens, 1995, pp. 272–79, 492–95, no. 35, ill. in black and white and color (overall and detail), reattributes it to Girolamo Macchietti.

Marta Privitera. Letter to Stephen Pepper. September 25, 1995, suggests Mirabello Cavalori as the author.

Mina Gregori. Letter to Stephen Pepper. September 19, 1995, accepts Privitera's attribution to Cavalori.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 115, ill.

Marta Privitera. Girolamo Macchietti: Un pittore dello studiolo di Francesco I (Firenze 1535–1592). Milan, 1996, pp. 58, 190, no. E4, ill. p. 191, erroneously describes it as a knight of Saint Stephen on p. 58 but catalogues it with rejected attributions as a knight of Malta on p. 190; suggests it is more similar to the works of Mirabello Cavalori.

Nicos Hadjinicolaou. "El Greco's Italian Period and Ellis K. Waterhouse." El Greco in Italy and Italian Art: Proceedings of the International Symposium. Ed. Nicos Hadjinicolaou. Rethymno, Crete, 1999, pp. 93, 95–96, 99–100, no. 17, ill.

Larry J. Feinberg. Letter to Keith Christiansen. December 20, 2000, attributes it to Mirabello Cavalori, finding that the hands are characteristic of his work.

Alessandro Cecchi. "Addenda a Maso da San Friano." Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Sylvie Béguin. Ed. Mario Di Giampaolo and Elisabetta Saccomani. Naples, 2001, pp. 278–80 nn. 16–19, fig. 4, attributes it to Maso da San Friano; suggests that the sitter might be one of the eleven Florentines, whose names he lists, who became Knights of Malta in 1566.

Michela Corso. "Jacopino del Conte nel contesto artistico romano tra gli anni trenta e gli anni cinquanta del Cinquecento." PhD diss., Università degli Studi Roma Tre, [2014], p. 159 n. 4.

Keith Christiansen. "Caravaggio's Achievement as a Painter of Portraits." Scritti di amici per M. Cristina Rodeschini. Bergamo, 2024, p. 111.

The frame is from Sicily and dates to about 1640 (see figs. 5–8 above). This elegant cassetta frame is made of poplar and retains its original water gilded surface. Both the sight edge and top edge are carved in laurel leaf ornament which radiate symmetrically from center clasps. The frieze is designed with an outer channel which provides a seat for the applied carving. While terminating in acanthus leaf corners a stylized running monogram of the letter "S" with a husk clasp relates to the name of the sitter. An acanthus leaf motif adorns the back edge. The mitres have been slightly trimmed to close them but the frame may have been made for the painting.

Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2016; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files

Although there are paint losses along the edges, the general state of the picture is very good. The surface has, however, been flattened by lining.