Vespasiano Gonzaga portrait

A young man is looking at us with a proud and slightly threatening gaze, consonant with his profession.
The figure in the portrait has long been identified as Vespasiano Gonzaga (1531–1591), Duke of Sabbioneta, descendant of a second tier of the Mantuan dynasty. The way that the Duke is presented follows the pattern of the official portrait painting of the time, that of the so-called stateportrait, as adopted from the mid-16th century by the European aristocracy, and especially those loyal to the Empire and Spain. The aim of this type of portrait was not to study the character of the person, but to portray with symbolic force their power and social role, conveying a sense of detachment and superiority. Recent diagnostics carried out that the painting is closer to the manner of the work of the most successful portrait painter of mid-16th-century Lombardy, Bernardino Campi of Cremona, who moreover worked on several occasions for Gonzaga. (P. Vanoli)