Venetian school, 16th cent. 16th century (after Titian) PORTRAIT OF A MAN IN BLUE ('ARIOSTO') oil on canvas, cm 126x111 Venetian school, 16th century (after Titian) PORTRAIT OF A MAN IN BLUE (ALSO KNOWN AS "ARIOSTO") oil on canvas, cm 126x111 Provenance Venice, Manfrin collection (tag and wax on frame); London, Rothschild collection; London, Sotheby's auction, 1977; private collection Bibliography Art collecting in Venice. The Eighteenth Century, edited by L. Borean and S. Mason, Venice 2009, fig. 3 p. 195, p. 198; G. Tagliaferro, Titian's Ariosto (London) is not Ariosto, and the Barbarigo is not known, in Venezia altrove, 4, 2005, pp. 119-128. "It is the poetry of portrait and the portrait of poetry." With this very eloquent phrase the English poet George Byron described, struck by its expressive power, this portrait, considered in the19th century one of the icons of the famous Manfrin collection to which it belonged, as attested by the inventories and the label pasted on the frame next to the one with the surname, applied to the paintings of the collection in the guise of a marque de collection. Beginning in the 1780s, Girolamo Manfrin had set up an exceptional collection of paintings in his palace overlooking the Grand Canal next to Ca' Loredan Vendramin Calergi, thanks to the proceeds of the tobacco manufacturing monopoly. The painting came into the possession of Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild at the end of the 19th century, and in 1977 it was sold during the famous auction of the Rothschild estate organized by Sotheby's. Until 1824, the painting presented here was the most famous version of the portrait known as The Gentleman in Blue by Titian, also known as the Ariosto: it was only in that year that the English nobleman Lord Darnely lent the specimen he owned to the British Institution, which was purchased in 1904 by the National Gallery in London, where it still stands today. The latter bears the initials "T. V.," the result of a cleaning carried out in 1949 that erased the partially apocryphal signature "TITIANVS TV." The fortune of both works also originates from the fact that they have been handed down under the evocative title Portrait of Ariosto. However, this is not the author of Orlando furioso whose features are known, portrayed moreover by Titian himself. However, his identification remains mysterious to this day despite the fact that various clues have led in the direction of the Barbarigo family (cf. Tagliaferro cit.): above all the description given by Vasari in the first pages of Titian's life of a "portrait of a gentleman from Ca' Barbarigo, a friend of his, which was held to be very beautiful, the resemblance of the complexion being proper and natural, and the hair so well distinguished one from the other, that one would count them, as one would also do the points of a silvery satin vest." The variations between the two portraits are minimal - ours has a less pronounced nose, slightly different outline of the hair on either side of the face, a slight increase in the protrusion of the sleeve from the parapet where the signature is missing - while the measurements are different because the canvas formerly Manfrin was later enlarged. Nineteenth-century comments and expert indications confirm a high quality of execution for the latter with an evocative and accentuated rendering of light reflections on the sleeve in the foreground and a more chiaroscuro color tonalism.