Santi di Tito (Sansepolcro 1536 - Firenze 1603), Portrait of a man with his son

Oil on panel cm. 91x73. Framed In the upper left, the painting bears a brush inscription: “ETAT[IS] ANNOR[UM] / XXVIII MENS[IUM] IIII / ETAT[IS] ANNOR[UM] X / MENSI[UM] X”.


The typology of the double portrait was frequently explored by Santi di Tito, who enjoyed equal reputation and authority both as a painter of sacred subjects and as a specialist in portraiture. The present remarkable painting constitutes a noble testimony to Florentine portraiture in the final decades of the sixteenth century, by then distant from the boldness of Pontormo and Mannerism, and directed instead towards a more restrained and domestic naturalism: in line, moreover, with the private and familial function of the work and the presumably “bourgeois” status of the sitters, also confirmed by the simplicity of their clothing. Of the sitters, the painting records only their ages (28 and 10), which, however, do not necessarily indicate a father-and-son relationship, but could also suggest a fraternal bond between the two figures.
The present painting can be convincingly compared with two other double portraits by Santi di Tito: the one depicting Domenico Passerini with his son Lorenzo (Dorotheum sale, Wien 15 October 2013, as lot 553, and again Pandolfini Florence sale, 15 April 2016, as lot 164) and the one with a Gentlewoman, young daughter, and small dog (Piasa sale, Paris, 18 December 2002). E. MERKEL, in Arte dal Gotico al Novecento. Contributi e schede, 2003, no. 35, pp. 138-141. Giuseppe Alessandra Collection, Treviso; private collection, London.