The sitter shown in Cardinal’s robes has been identified as Cardinal Giovanni Grimani rather than as an older member of the same family, as was previously supposed when the picture left the Palazzo Grimani in Venice in the late 1820s.   Although highly regarded in his time, this prelate had a chequered career.   He was described in glowing terms towards the end of his life by Andrea di Capua, Papal Nuncio to Venice in 1577.   ‘... il Patriarca Grimani è el primo et il più stimato di tutti gli altri, così per età et per dignità, come perché ha gran parentado et grandi amici et è piu liberale et splendido di nessun altro; et quei Signori l’hanno in tanta consideratione, che alcune volte l’ammettono nel Consiglio dei Dieci a dire il suo parere sopra le cose importanti al publico’.  As a young man, his rise in the Church was meteoric.  Whilst still in his twenties he became Bishop of Ceneda and in 1528, at the age of twenty two, he was elevated to the prestigious position of Patriarch of Aquileia, a sinecure held previously by two Grimani family members. Grimani’s later career was dogged by the Papal refusal to elevate him to the position of Cardinal, even though this would have been procedurally correct for someone holding an ancient ecclesiastical office, dating back to the 4th century AD.   In spite of this, the sitter is portrayed in full Cardinal’s robes, which has led scholars, while certain of the sitter’s identity, to suggest that he was painted in the robes of the office he never held, which is very unusual in the context of the time.

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