Domenico Veneziano (attributed to), Italian (c. 1410-1461)
Portrait of Michele Olivieri, c. 1440-55
Tempera on panel, 17 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

During the middle decades of the fifteenth century, the bust-length profile portrait enjoyed a remarkable popularity among the patrician classes of the Florentine republic. The Florentines used such stern and schematic self images to project a sense of their social status and civic responsibility and to convey to posterity an eternal vision of republican and family virtues. A rare, early example of this Florentine profile type is the Chrysler Museum portrait of 1440-55.

The Latin inscription on the ledge at bottom identifies the sitter as "Michele Olivieri, Matteo's son," who was a member of a prominent Florentine merchant family. Though neither Michele Olivieri nor his father Matteo appears to have held high office in the Florentine government, Michele's grandfather, Ser Giovanni, served as prior in the city in 1349. The sitter's ceremonial attire -- he wears a white, pleated doublet with fur collar, a rose-colored cape and a loosely tied, salmon-red turban -- confirms his lofty social standing and helps to date the painting to the years after 1440.

The pendant profile portrait of Matteo Olivieri is today in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Rediscovered by scholars in the early 1930s, the Oliveri pendants have been compared to three other, comparably designed Florentine male portraits (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Chambery; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; and another in the National Gallery of Art). The pendants were attributed early to Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), but more recent writers have placed them within the sphere of Domenico Veneziano. Some Florentine profile portraits were posthumous productoins, idealized evocations of departed family members.

The Olivieri pendants served a similarly commemorative function. At the time these portraits were made, Michele was roughly sixty-five years old and Matteo already dead, yet both are portrayed as young men. The paintings were intended, then, as timeless "memory images" of father and son, which may have taken their place in the Olivieri's own portrait gallery of illustrious family members.

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