Carlo Rimbotti (1518–1591)

The Artist: A major figure of sixteenth-century painting, Francesco de’ Rossi, better known as Francesco Salviati, was born in Florence in 1510. He was a close contemporary of Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572). The painter-biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), who trained alongside him, considered him a close friend and wrote an extensive biography that remains our primary source of information. For Vasari, Salviati represented an almost ideal painter, talented and knowledgeable of the most important artistic developments of his time. He remarked that Salviati had "la piu bella maniera" (the most beautiful manner) of any artist in the city and recorded that his reputation as a painter of inventive, monumental narrative scenes was unsurpassed.

The young Cecchino de’ Rossi studied with a series of Florentine artists, including Andrea del Sarto, and in 1531 he left Florence for Rome. There, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, from whom he took his professional name, supported him. The young artist was impressed by Classical antiquity, the monumental paintings of Raphael and his school, and the Roman works of Michelangelo, and before leaving the city he created one masterpiece, a fresco of the Visitation (1538, Oratory of S. Giovanni Decollato). At the end of the decade, he traveled and worked extensively in northern Italy, especially in Venice and Bologna. He received important commissions in both cities, and in turn was open to the pictorial qualities of Venetian painting, and, especially, the works Parmigianino (1503–1540) that he viewed in Bologna.

Cardinal Salviati’s brother, Alamanno Salviati, invited the artist to return to Florence in 1543 to work for Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Once there, there he undertook the commission of a cycle of monumental frescoes depicting the life of the Roman commander Furius Camillus in the Sala dell’ Udienza (Audience Chamber) of the Palazzo Vecchio. It was during this period, one of the highpoints of his career, that Salviati painted The Met’s portrait of Carlo Rimbotti as well as the remarkable Three Fates (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) that also belonged to the Rimbotti family. Vasari’s lengthy description of the frescoes in his Life of the artist, which focused on the skill with which Salviati conjured up the ancient world and the grace with which figures, animals, and ornament were depicted, give us some sense of the impact they made when unveiled (see Vasari, trans. de Vere, 1912/1996, vol. 2, pp. 566–68). Salviati painted portraits throughout his career, and in Florence he undertook portraits both for the ruling family and for people that he knew well, including those of a goldsmith and a furrier. However, the attribution of portraits to Salviati has remained one of the most complex and vexing issues surrounding his oeuvre.

Salviati returned to Rome in late 1548 and, except for brief stays in France, Milan, and Florence in the mid-1550s, settled there and continued to carry out major commissions for altarpieces and frescoes for the most significant ecclesiastical patrons. These cemented his reputation as the greatest creator of painted narratives active in the city. His cycle of frescoes in a chapel in the German national church of Santa Maria dell’Anima is a landmark of late Mannerist painting in an innovative, antiquarian style. Thanks to his close relationship with his biographer, we know that Salviati had a melancholic and difficult personality (Vasari calls him "melancholy, abstinent, sickly, and cross-grained"), which made it difficult for him to participate in the social world of his fellow artists but drove him to work continuously and with intense concentration. Salviati died in 1563, and in summing up his achievement Vasari said that he excelled at invention, in the creation of "ornament," in his bold use of color, in his craftsmanship, in his understanding of the nude, and in the manner in which he "gave great beauty and grace to every kind of head." (Vasari, de Vere, vol. 2, pp. 580–81).

The Painting: Discovered only in 2016, this painting is a touchstone of Salviati’s achievement as a portraitist. Contemporary inscriptions and red wax seals on the reverse of the intact panel (see fig. 1 above, and Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings) establish that the painting depicts the Florentine medical doctor Carlo Rimbotti (1518–1591) at the age of thirty in 1548. One of the wax seals is impressed with the Rimbotti coat of arms (gold with three bands of azure, as in Il libro d’oro della Toscana). The inscriptions—whose legibility is enhanced under UV light—identify the artist twice; that in the lower right, written in block letters, asserts in Latin that he is "Francesco, the protégé of Cardinal Salviati." Gesso drips along the edges provide evidence that the panel is intact and has not been cut down.

Salviati depicted Rimbotti almost half-length, with his body at a slight angle and his head in three-quarter view. He is hatless, and the artist has paid close attention to his compelling features, such as his light eyes, and the two moles on his brow and forehead. He wears a dark doublet over a white camicia with a thin ruff collar. The book he holds in his right hand has the red binding with thin gold ornament and ribbon tie that are characteristic of Italian books of the first half of the century, and, given Rimbotti’s interests is likely to be a small volume of the poems of Petrarch, or a Petrarchino. The viewer senses the psychological presence of the sitter; this combined with the relative informality of the image suggests that artist and sitter were well acquainted (see below). While many of the portraits attributed to Salviati show the sitter at a formal distance and surrounded by accoutrements that suggest his or her status, here instead the artist has brought Rimbotti close to us, cropping the edges of his head and proper right hand. In its vivid directness and painterly quality, the head seems most closely allied with the portraits included in the fresco of The Triumph of Furius Camillus, above all the self-portrait that Vasari tells us the artist included (Vasari, de Vere, vol. 2, p. 567), painted in 1543–45.

The Sitter and his Family: Carlo Rimbotti was a politically and socially ambitious medical doctor from a well-established family (on his biography, see Fabbri 2005, pp. 35–40). He studied at the University of Bologna, where he received the title of doctor of arts and medicine. The 1540s were a critical decade for him: in 1543, he was emancipated from his father and almost immediately matriculated as a doctor into his professional organization, the Arte dei medici e speziali. He rose to the highest rank there over the next decades, while also beginning to hold an important series of political positions, rising equally quickly through positions in the Florentine government, and ensuring roles for his three sons as well. During the 1540s, he lived in the family’s old home, but after his mother’s death in 1554 he bought an important property, near the Duomo, that had been developed by the Del Palagio family, in part as early as the fourteenth century.

Perhaps most relevantly, Rimbotti became a member of the prestigious literary academy, the Accademia Fiorentina in 1541, a year following its founding. Salviati joined him there in 1545, and this may have been the arena in which they met. That same year the publisher Anton Francesco Doni joined the Accademia as well, and Salviati produced portrait designs for books he was publishing, as well as frontispieces for his Lettioni d’Accademici Fiorentini sopra Dante. Libro primo and Prose antiche di Dante, Petrarcha, et Boccaccio et di molti altri nobili et virtuosi ingegni nuovamente raccolte (both 1547) (see Alessandro Cecchi in Francesco Salviati (1510–1563) o la Bella Maniera, ed. Catherine Monbeig Goguel. Exh. cat., Villa Medici, Rome. Milan, 1998, p. 72). Salviati’s depiction of Rimbotti holding the small, precious book is another indication of the Accademia’s impact on these men, and of the interests that brought them together.

When Carlo died in 1591, two of his three sons were living. It is possible that his eldest, Giovambattista (1550–1624), inherited Salviati’s The Three Fates (Galleria Palatina, Florence), mentioned above. He bequeathed it to his son Rimbotto Rimbotti (1593–1664), a Cavaliere of the Order of Santo Stefano, in whose collection it was noted the year following his death (see Catherine Monbeig Goguel in Francesco Salviati (1510–1563) o la Bella Maniera,1998, pp. 204–5). Carlo's second son, Tommaso (1565–1622), instead inherited Carlo’s portrait. Tommaso was an ecclesiastic who was also an accomplished poet in his early life, and in his will, we learn that the painting had remained in the family home and was also left to Rimbotto, his nephew (Fabbri 2005, p. 40 n. 174). Rimbotto Rimbotti was himself an active collector, mentioned in several passages in Filippo Baldinucci’s Notizie de’ professori del disegno (first volume published 1681) for his collections of drawings and paintings (1846/1974, vol. 3, pp. 16, 280–82; vol. 6, pp. 436–37). It is likely that the painting passed at his death to his heir Alesso (1632–1699). After that we lose trace of the work.

Technical examination of the picture with X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mapping analysis has revealed that Rimbotti’s portrait was painted over another of a different sitter (see Technical Notes and figs. 2–3). The facial features of this first figure were positioned lower on the panel, and the sitter was beardless, with a smooth, round jaw. The figure had sloping shoulders, a different collar, and either a cap with an elaborate silhouette or a braid. It is difficult to tell whether this initial sitter was male or female. This image was completely suppressed by the subsequent depiction of Rimbotti.

Andrea Bayer 2017

Summary: Non-invasive SRF mapping measurements were carried out. The lead distribution maps (Lalpha and Lbetha lines) are particularly useful for revealing changes to the composition (see figs. 2–3 above). Other maps include those for mercury, copper (showing a copper-based pigment, most likely azurite), calcium, and barium. The maps are held by the Department of Scientific Research.

Methodology: X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mapping analysis was performed with the Bruker M6 Jetstream system equipped with a Rh source operated at 50kV and 600uA. The focal spot size was 700 microns, the step size was 700 microns, and the dwell time was 90 ms/pixel. The spatial distributions of the elements of interest were obtained using the Bruker software.

[Silvia A. Centeno 2017]

Inscription: Inscribed in one or more early hands on back of panel: (upper left) Annj 30; (upper center) XXX / AN [monogram] / Ritratto di [Sig.re?] Carlo Rimbotti / di man[o] di Cecchino Salviati; (lower right) FRANCISCUS CARD SALVIATUS / ALU[M]N[U]S; [illegible]; (two red wax seals) Rimbotti coat of arms (gold with three bands of azure); D [?] R [intertwined]

the sitter, Palazzo Rimbotti, Florence (until d. 1591); his son, Tommaso Rimbotti, Palazzo Rimbotti (1591–d. 1622); his nephew, Rimbotto di Giovambattista Rimbotti, Florence (1622–d. 1664); ?his son, Alesso Rimbotti (1664–d. 1699); ?his nephew, Verdiano di Alberto Rimbotti (1699–d. 1727); private collection, Italy (from the late 19th century; sold to Trinity Fine Art); [Trinity Fine Art, London, until 2017; sold to The Met]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570," June 26–October 11, 2021, no. 45.

Lorenzo Fabbri in Tommaso Rimbotti. Rime. Florence, 2005, pp. 40, 48, quotes from the relevant portion of the sitter's son Tommaso's will, where he leaves the portrait of Carlo Rimbotti by Salviati to his nephew Rimbotto; notes that it is not possible to identify this work, which may be lost.

Carlo Falciani. "Il ritratto di Carlo Rimbotti, un committente fiorentino di Francesco Salviati." Paragone 69 (January 2018), pp. 50–59, colorpl. 54, publishes the picture together with detailed biographical information on the sitter, noting especially Carlo Rimbotti’s participation in the Accademia Fiorentina as reformed under Cosimo de’ Medici and the importance of viewing the picture as a contribution to the debate concerning Tuscan as the common language of Italy and of Salviati’s consequential sponsoring of a style combining “memories of the late Raphael, but updated in light of a completely Venetian naturalistic sensibility”.

Andrea J. Bayer in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2016–2018." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 76 (Fall 2018), p. 27, ill. (color).

Carlo Falciani in Vasari per Bindo Altoviti: Il Cristo portacroce / The Christ Carrying the Cross. Milan, 2019, pp. 22–24, 29 nn. 13–14, fig. 13 (color), notes that Salviati's execution of Rimbotti's lips, beard, and eyes "almost resembles the mastery of Titian".

Carlo Falciani. "Il 'Cristo portacroce' di Giorgio Vasari per Bindo Altoviti e una proposta per Cecchino Salviati." Paragone 70 (January 2019), pp. 30, 33 nn. 13–14, fig. 37.

Keith Christiansen in The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570. Ed. Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2021, pp. 9, 284.

Carlo Falciani in The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570. Ed. Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2021, pp. 40, 46, 83, 190, 250, 258, 286, fig. 14 (color detail).

Elizabeth Cropper in The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570. Ed. Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2021, p. 56.

Julia Siemon in The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570. Ed. Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2021, p. 163.

Andrea Bayer in The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570. Ed. Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2021, pp. 179, 187–88, no. 45, ill. pp. 8, 189 (color, overall and detail).

Aimee Ng. "Hazardous Dukes." Apollo 194 (September 2021), p. 89, fig. 4 (color).

Roberta Smith. "For the Medici, the Last Great Picture Show." New York Times (June 24, 2021) [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/arts/design/medici-portraits-met-museum.html].

Elizabeth Cropper. "By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800." Burlington Magazine 164 (January 2022), p. 64.

Alexandre Lafore. "Un portrait de la Renaissance offert au Metropolitan Museum of Art." Tribune de l'art (February 9, 2023), fig. 6 (color) [https://www.latribunedelart.com/un-portrait-de-bindo-altoviti-offert-au-metropolitan-museum-ot-art].

The carved walnut and parcel-gilt cassetta frame with straight-fluted ovolo is Florentine, mid-sixteenth century, and was purchased and adapted for the picture in 2017.