Portrait of Daniele Barbaro

Portrait of Daniele Barbaro by Paolo Veronese, painted around 1565-70 and now in the Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit (Netherlands State Art Collection), depicts one of the most important intellectual patrons in Veronese's career — the Venetian patrician Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570) who translated and commented on Vitruvius's architectural treatise with illustrations by Andrea Palladio. Barbaro commissioned from Veronese the extraordinary fresco program at the Villa Barbaro at Maser (c. 1561), where painted figures lean through painted windows and false doorways to observe the real inhabitants — one of the most innovative uses of illusionistic painting in Italian art. The portrait's unusually direct and psychologically penetrating quality reflects the close working relationship between patron and painter, and Barbaro's evident intellectual authority gives the portrait a gravitas unusual in Veronese's relatively small portrait output. The work's presence in the Netherlands State Art Collection reflects the complex history of old master paintings confiscated or recovered in the twentieth century.

The scholarly sitter is rendered with Veronese's characteristic warm palette and refined technique, the precisely observed features and dignified pose conveying Barbaro's intellectual authority.