Portrait of Pietro Bembo, also called Portrait of the Young Pietro Bembo, is an oil painting by Italian artist Raphael. Completed ca. 1506, the painting hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
The image is ostensibly a portrait of Venetian Cardinal Pietro Bembo, Raphael's long-time friend. Raphael did make a black chalk drawing of Bembo during Bembo's visit to Urbino in 1506. The picture hung in Bembo's home for years before it disappeared.
The lack of resemblance of this picture to its namesake, particularly in the nose, has led to other subjects being proposed, including Agnolo Doni, whom Raphael painted around the same time. In a 2004 biography of Bembo, Carol Kidwell states that the subject "appears a happy courtier, not a man set on making his mark in the world, and he wears a red beret while Venetian noblemen wore black."
Famous quotes containing the word portrait:
“The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)