Background
Daniele Barbaro was a member of the Venetian aristocracy (see Barbaro family). He was an important prelate, humanist and architectural theorist, who commissioned a number of works from Veronese. Veronese had been involved directly with Barbaro and his brother Marcantonio Barbaro, decorating the Villa Barbaro, Maser, which Palladio designed.
Here Barbaro is portrayed sitting in the audience posture (reserved normally for Popes and cardinals) in recognition of his status as cardinal and Patriarch of Aquileia.
The book standing up is the La Practica della Perspettiva, Barbaro's treatise on artistic perspective. The other volume on the table is Barbaro's "Commentary" on Vitruvius' De architectura, which has illustrations by Andrea Palladio. Barbaro's Commentary on Vitruvius was published in Italian in 1556, but the portrait may be linked to the publication of a second edition in Latin in the 1560s.
Read more about this topic: Portrait Of Daniele Barbaro
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)