Giorgio Cornaro and the Cloth of Gold

Abstract

In his series of biographies, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) recalled seeing a portrait of the young Giorgio Cornaro (ca. 1454–1527) by Gentile Bellini (1429–1507)—however, it is either lost or resists identification. The portrait may be synonymous with the so-called Portrait of a Procurator and an Allegorical Figure (ca. 1490; fig. 1), from the Emo Capodilista collection in the Musei Civici agli Eremitani, Padua. Previously, the Paduan painting has been assigned to Gentile Bellini by Van Marle in 1935; Girolamo da Santacroce by Berenson in 1936; the Venetian School by Moschetti in 1938; and Domenico Campagnola by Heinemann in 1962.