Description
In a note from 1530, the Venetian patrician and art lover Marcantonio Michiel mentions a portrait painted by Raphael of the poet and humanist Pietro Bembo, which he saw in Bembo's house in Padua. The painting was painted in Urbino sometime between 1504 and 1506: in other words, it is one of Raphael's earliest works. As such, the confined space, the parapet motif, and the somewhat unnatural position of the hands resting on it still betray the influence of Dutch models and Perugino. Bembo became one of the main figures in the literary life of the Renaissance mainly with his poems written in the style of Petrarch, his treatise on love, Gli Asolani, and his linguistic-stylistic work entitled Prose.
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