Portrait of Count Fortunato Martinengo, c.1542 by Moretto da Brescia Canvas Print - 3149-BMD
Location: National Gallery, London, UK Original Size: 114 × 94.4 cm
Portrait of Count Fortunato Martinengo by Moretto da Brescia (c.1542) is reproduced as a museum-quality giclée canvas print. Printed with archival inks on 400 g/m² canvas and hand-varnished for UV protection, it can be made in any size up to 41.3 × 34.1 in, scaled proportionally, with optional framing. Free worldwide shipping available; unframed prints ship in 2 workdays, framed in 7 to 8. Guaranteed 100-year color durability.
You can add a frame in Customize Your Print below: open the Frame tab and choose a profile. Framing is available while the long side of the print is no more than 28", a limit set by the couriers. If your size is larger, move the slider down and the frames become available.
We stretch the canvas on stretcher bars, build the frame to your size and attach a hanger, so the print arrives ready to hang. Canvas is framed without glass, like a painting, so its texture stays visible. Framed prints are made in 7 to 8 workdays. Once a frame is chosen, you can also add a mat.
Have a frame of your own? Choose Stretched: the canvas comes on stretcher bars only, with a cord for hanging.
Every frame is made to measure, so framed prints are not part of our 30-day returns. If one arrives damaged, we replace it. More about framing.
Mat
A mat is the border between the print and the frame. On canvas it is a liner: a narrow profile of solid wood or polystyrene that sits inside the frame, adds depth and gives the image a quiet margin. It is optional.
You can add one in Customize Your Print below, in the Mat tab. The tab appears once you have chosen a frame, because a mat always sits inside one. A mat makes the framed piece larger by twice its width in each direction: each option shows its width, and the Framed Size in Your Selection above updates as you choose. More about mats.
Rolled
Your print is shipped rolled in a protective tube, unstretched and unframed. Around the image we leave 1.2 in of blank canvas on every side, so any local framer can stretch it on stretcher bars and frame it to your taste.
Prefer it ready to hang? Choose a frame, or Stretched for stretcher bars without a frame, in Customize Your Print below.
Sizes scale proportionally to the original. Dimensions shown are for the printed area - we always add 1.2 in of blank canvas on every side for stretching.
The size you set is the printed image, the part you see once the canvas is stretched. Beyond that size we add 1.2 in of blank canvas on every side, at no extra cost, so the stretcher bars have something to grip. A 21.7 × 17.9 in print therefore arrives as 24 × 20.2 in. Both numbers are shown in Your Selection above and change with the slider.
Yes. The slider covers every size up to 41.3 × 34.1 in, always in the proportions of the original. If you need something larger, or a size that has to fit a frame you already own, write to us with the title and the dimensions and we will tell you what is possible. Every print is made to order, so there is usually a way.
Because the original is an oil painting on canvas. We match the print medium to the original: oil paintings go on canvas, works on paper go on fine art paper. Our canvas is natural cotton, 400 g/m² Canvas, acid-free and pH neutral, and its woven texture gives the most natural impression of Moretto da Brescia's original oil painting. The finish is satin/gloss, which keeps the depth of the dark tones the way varnish does on a painting in a museum; a matte canvas looks dull and pale next to it. More about our print media.
Start with the original, which measures 114 × 94.4 cm. A print at or near that size reads the way the artist judged it. Printing smaller is easy; enlarging a small original changes its character. For the wall, above a sofa or a sideboard aim for two thirds to three quarters of the furniture width, and hang the center at eye level. Cut paper to size and tape it to the wall before you order. The original hangs in National Gallery, London, UK. Full size guide.
30-day returns on unframed prints. Shipping, framing, care and returns are covered in our Help & FAQ.
About the Painting
The fur arrives first: a great fall of pale lynx or snow leopard pelt, dotted with dark flecks, pouring from the shoulders to the bottom edge of the canvas without a single break. Moretto da Brescia paints it tuft by tuft, creamy at the edges and grayer in the shadows, so soft it almost looks warm. Inside it sits a doublet of near-black cloth worked with gold strapwork and a column of tiny gilt buttons, and sleeves of bottle-green silk, quilted so that the light runs along the ridges like water.
The man wrapped in all this is Fortunato Martinengo, a nobleman of Brescia and a scholar, who founded a society with the wonderfully honest name Accademia dei Dubbiosi, the Academy of the Doubtful, where religious and intellectual questions were argued over. He props his cheek against his right hand, his elbow sinking into a pair of glossy pink cushions, and looks not at us but somewhere off to the side, eyelids heavy. On his black cap, next to a white plume, a small gold badge carries a line in Greek, a sigh confessing an overwhelming longing. For what, the picture never says. In 1541 Fortunato left on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and the portrait may date from just before he went. It is tempting to think the journey is already playing in his head.
Head in hand was the age-old sign of melancholy, the brooding temperament of thinkers, familiar from Albrecht Dürer's engraving Melencolia I, whose figure sits idle among tools she has stopped using. Fortunato has his own neglected objects. On the moss-green tablecloth lie a pair of soft gray gloves, three ancient coins - two silver ones stamped with imperial heads and a third, perhaps gold, in a little turned box - and a bronze oil lamp shaped like a foot in a sandal, probably made in Padua in his own century to pass as an antique. Earlier Italian portraits of collectors by Lorenzo Lotto and Parmigianino show men meeting our eye beside their treasures. This one seems to have drifted away from his.
Moretto keeps everything close to the surface. Behind the count hangs a crimson and gold damask, painted so exactly that a real piece of silk velvet cloth of gold must have been in the studio, and at the right a strip of veined gray marble, possibly a door frame, shuts off any depth. Even his knees barely register beneath the unbroken fur. The luxury presses forward, and so does the man's inward mood. The format clearly pleased Moretto and his clients, and around 1633 Anthony van Dyck very likely had this picture in mind for his portrait of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland.
Look at the hands in the Portrait of Count Fortunato Martinengo. The right one holds up a tired head. The left grips the red velvet arm of the chair, firmly, as if part of him is already rising to leave.
