An example of Porta’s mature draftsmanship, this drawing demonstrates a range of techniques, from the carefully modeled face and crumpled sleeve pleats to the delicate strokes describing the figure’s beard. The artist achieved rich and vibrant color effects by employing four different chalks against blue-gray paper. The sheet served as a preparatory study for a fresco in the Sala Regia—a formal reception hall in the Vatican—that was executed between 1562 and 1566. The corresponding painted figure, who gestures emphatically while conferring with an armored warrior standing nearby, can be seen in the large crowd at right.
Giuseppe Porta, called Giuseppe Salviati
Italian, ca. 1520–ca. 1575
Bearded man with his right arm raised, 1562–64
Black, red, and ocher chalk, with touches of white chalk, on bluish- gray paper
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray; 2019.860
Gray Collection Trust, Art Institute of Chicago
John Marciari: Hello, I'm John Marciari, the Charles W. Engelhardt curator and head of the Department of Drawings and Prints, and also curatorial chair here at The Morgan. Giuseppe Porta is an artistic chameleon of sorts. He was trained by the Florentine Mannerist artist, Francesco Salviati, and his early work closely resembles that of his master, whose name he also adopted. The two of them traveled to Venice in 1539, but Porto remained behind when Salviati returned to Central Italy. In the years that followed, Porta increasingly came to combine his central Italian sense of form with a Venetian sense of color. His paintings would often model figures and thin glazes of oil paint in the manner of Venetian artists. Similarly, his use of multicolored chalks in a drawing like this one derives from works by the Bassano family, also active in Venice. The Bearded Man, one of the artist's masterpieces, is for a fresco that Porta painted in the Vatican during a brief return to Rome in the 1560s. The figure's face is so full of life that the drawing seems surely based on a live model. But the reason why Porta made so careful a study for a papal guardsman in the middle of a crowded scene remains a mystery, as does the man's identity.