Terracotta bust, self-portrait of Alessandro Vittoria, Italy (Venice), ca. 1600

The man is balding with a pointed beard, and his head is turned to the left. A cloak, which falls in heavy folds, is held by a clasp on his right shoulder. Beneath the cloak he wears a buttoned tunic with a high collar.

Given by Mr F. Cavendish Bentinck

The bust was in Palazzo Manfrin in Venice, when it was acquired, before 1870, for the Cavendish Bentinck collection, together with five companion busts. The Manfrin collection was formed by Count Girolamo Manfrin in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From 1871 the bust was on loan to the V&A. It was presented to the museum in 1948 by F. Cavendish-Bentinck.

Alessandro Vittoria was, together with his contemporary Giambologna, the foremost sculptor in late sixteenth century Italy. While he worked in many media and genres, his portraits have enjoyed particular critical acclaim since Vasari first praised them.
Vittoria popularised the genre of the portrait bust in Venice during the second half of the sixteenth century, transforming it into the dominant mode of sculptured portraiture, and exerted a near monopoly on its production.
The culture promulgated by an avant-garde of artists, patrons and intellectuals in Renaissance Venice allowed Vittoria's gift as a portraitist to flourish.
The demand for portraits busts coincides with the introduction of the classicizing busts in Venice, a genre in which Vittoria specialized. A "all'antica" portrait not only showed devotion to the classical past, it also marked another stage in Venice's quest during the sixteenth century to invest itself with antique auctoritas. Portrait busts such as this one were status symbols amongst the Venetian elite.

In 1543 Alessandro Vittoria moved to Venice, where he became the most important sculptor in the city. He produced many lively and realistic busts in bronze, marble and terracotta. This one may have been a preparatory model for the marble version on his own tomb in the church of San Zaccaria.

A.12-1948