Palma il Giovane

Over the course of his long career, Palma Giovane produced a large number of self-portraits on paper, including a close variant of the Morgan drawing preserved in the Biblioteca Reale, Turin.¹ The two drawings probably originated in a rather quick succession, with the Turin sheet preceding the study at the Morgan. While the Morgan version is a highly finished drawing, the Turin sheet was made early in the development of the composition and was altered as the project evolved, although the date (ANNO 1597) inscribed in the cartouche of the Turin sheet can in fact also be convincingly assigned to the Morgan sheet. Around that time, Palma had reached the peak of his career. After the deaths of the three protagonists of Venetian painting—Titian in 1576, Veronese in 1588, and Tintoretto in 1594—Palma reigned in Venice as the unrivaled master of the Lagoon’s artistic and cultural scene, obtaining the majority of public and private commissions. The fact that in late-sixteenth-century Venice prominent artists like Palma were considered not only as mere craftsmen but as respected intellectuals is suggested here by Palma’s approach to self-representation. Palma did not depict himself as an artist at work but instead as an elegant middle-class man. Furthermore, he enclosed his portrait within an elaborate frame in which, through a calculated system of allegorical references, he alludes to his profession. Executed in Palma’s preferred medium of expression, pen and ink with touches of wash, the drawing proves the painter’s virtuosity as a draftsman and his ability as an inventor of sophisticated compositions.

The iconography of the Morgan drawing is elaborate and differs in some important details from the Turin sheet. Above the oval that encloses Palma’s portrait are two crossed bundles (probably symbolizing the brushes of the painter) and two branches wedged within rates the top of the frame. On the left is a branch of a palm tree, an obvious allusion to the name of the artist, while on the right is that of a laurel, a clear reference to the fame that the painter obtained during the course of his long and successful career. Two allegorical figures flank the central oval frame. The female figure symbolizing Abundance on the left, with a staff in her right hand and a cornucopia in her left arm, was in the first version of the drawing an allegory of Virtue, as the inscription (Virtus) above the crowned head of the figure in the Turin sheet seems to suggest. During the working process, Palma changed his mind and altered the figure, probably in an effort to emphasize both his prolific nature and the elevated social and economic status that he had achieved. The male nude depicted on the right hand side of the portrait, seen from the back while trying to reach the laurel branch, represents Fame.

As suggested by Linda Wolk-Simon, the sheet could have been designed as a frontispiece to a published edition of prints after Palma’s drawings.² Although various volumes of drawings by Palma and his school are known today, just the small album in the Fondation Custodia, Paris, seems to have been assembled by the artist himself.³ If the Morgan Self-Portrait was effectively intended as a design for a print, one should visualize it in reverse. This would explain the clockwise movement imposed on the page by the gestures of the figures, with the putto looking up, the male figure stretching to the top of the composition, and then, on the opposite side of the page, the female figure looking down to the second putto, who gazes into the distance.

This highly refined self-portrait was given by the artist before his death to Nicolas Lanier, who formed one of the earliest and most celebrated collections early seventeenth century. His distinctive collection mark, a small eight-pointed star, was once visible along the lower edge of the central oval, although it has since been effaced.

—MSB

Footnotes:

1. Biblioteca Reale, Turin, inv. 15959; see Bertini 1958, 42, no. 299. See also Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris, inv. 249, 16v (see Byam Shaw 1983, 1: no. 249); Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth, inv. 1064A (see Jaffé 1994, no. 814); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. IV, 82:1 (see, most recently, New York and Washington 2018–19, 205); and National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, inv. d 2237 (see Andrews 1968, 1: no. D2237).
2. Wolk-Simon in New York and Chicago 1994, 135.
3. Mason Rinaldi 1973, 125–26.