Portrait of a Young Man in Red
Shown from the chest up, a clean-shaven young man with pale, peachy skin looks off to our left against a cloudy sky in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and he gazes in that direction with dark eyes under thick, arched brows. He has a long nose, smooth cheeks, and a hint of a five-o-clock shadow around his closed, peach-colored lips. Chestnut-brown hair is covered by a black headdress with two long tails. One end drapes over the front of his right shoulder, farther from us, and the other end hangs down his back. He wears a brick-red garment that falls in vertical pleats from a high collar. A white undergarment peeks out from the top of the neckline, and the collar is fastened with a small clasp at the throat. Behind him, tan-colored clouds float across a blue sky.
Details
- Palette
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Select a color to find related artworks.
- Medium
- oil and tempera on panel
- Dimensions
- overall: 32 x 26.5 cm (12 5/8 x 10 7/16 in.) framed: 50.5 x 44.9 x 3.5 cm (19 7/8 x 17 11/16 x 1 3/8 in.)
- Department
- CIS-R
- Holding institution
- National Gallery of Art
- Image provider
- national-gallery-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Art Genome Taxonomy
8 tags
Subject Matter
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Individual Portrait Both · 99%
The composition centers on one identifiable young male sitter shown from the chest up, and the catalog title identifies the work as “Portrait of a Young Man in Red.”
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Face Visual · 98%
The face occupies a large portion of the composition, with particular attention to the eyes, arched brows, long nose, mouth, and softly modeled cheeks.
Styles and Movements
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Renaissance Art Interpretive · 84%
The fifteenth-century date, panel support, individualized portrait format, and naturalistic modeling are consistent with Renaissance art; the supplied catalog does not separately assign this style.
Visual Qualities
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Dark Colors Visual · 92%
The image is dominated by deep black, brick red, ochre, and muted blue-gray tones, giving it a generally dark and restrained palette.
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Earth Tones Visual · 86%
The red garment, warm ochre and peach flesh tones, brown hair, and tan-gray background passages create a subdued earth-toned range alongside the blue background.
Medium and Techniques
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Painting Metadata · 99%
The National Gallery of Art classifies the object as a painting and identifies its medium as oil and tempera on panel.
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Oil on Panel Metadata · 98%
The catalog identifies the support as panel and the medium as oil and tempera, supporting the oil-on-panel category while acknowledging the additional tempera component.
Time Periods
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15th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog dates the work to c. 1480, placing it within the fifteenth century.
Source & rights
Giovanni Bellini. Portrait of a Young Man in Red. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.