BERNARDINO LICINIO (attr. to) (Venice, c. 1485 - ante c. 1560) Portrait of a Friar Oil on paper applied to canvas, 45.7X34.3 cm Provenance: New York, Sotheby's, 18 May 2006, lot 64 (as attributed to Bernardino Licinio) Milan, private collection The painter, who addressed himself to the portrait genre, achieved extraordinary critical success by producing half-figure compositions in which his soberly naturalistic language finds the most appropriate means of expression. This language, by the end of the 1930s, was modelled on a taste of Roman import recognisable by its classicist sensibility and this influence was dictated by the diffusion of Raphael's models, the presence of Giulio Romano in Mantua and Salviati in Venice. The portrait under examination finds comparison with the canvas of the same subject in the Zeri Archive (no. 39410; oil on canvas, 113x90 cm), in which a particular physiognomic similarity and the same formal eloquence reminiscent of the sculptures of Tullio Lombardo (Padua, 1455 ; Venice, 1532) can be observed. Reference bibliography: L. Vertova, Bernardino Licinio, in I pittori bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo, Il Cinquecento, I, Bergamo 1975, pp. 373-467 L. Vertova, La bottega Licinio e l'omaggio a donne celebri (e ignote), in Studi di storia dell'arte, 14.2003, pp. 121-140 L. Vertova, Bernardino and Giulio Licinio: addenda and clarifications, in Studi di storia dell'arte, 16.2005, pp. 125-158 K. Tsoumis, Bernardino Licinio: Portraiture, Kinship and Community in Renaissance Venice, Toronto 2013, p. 118, n. 175, fig. 92