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| Raphael Portrait of Bindo Altoviti ca. 1515 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
In 2005 David Alan Brown and Jane Van Nimmen brought out a book with Yale University Press called Raphael & The Beautiful Banker: the story of the Bindo Altoviti Portrait. With industrious research and a gift for narrative, they account for wild fluctuations in this picture's reputation over the past five centuries, when both subject and painter regularly suffered under tenacious misidentifications. One of the book's appendices offers the work's provenance, reproduced below. It follows the afterlife of rich young Bindo's original commission for his own portrait (probably on the occasion of his marriage to Fiammetta Soderini) from Raphael, then indisputably the dominant (and most expensive) painter in Rome.
1556 Archbishop Antonio Altoviti, Bindo's older son
1573 Giovanni Battista Altoviti, younger son
1590 End of Bindo's direct line; heir is distant cousin, Giovanni di Bernardo Altoviti
1592 Pierozzo di Ridolfo Altoviti, firstborn son of another distant relative
1644 Giovambattista Altoviti, Pierozzo's older son
1656 Monsignor Antonio Altoviti, oldest son of Giovambattista
1695 Giovambattista Altoviti, son of Msgr. Antonio's younger brother
1716 Giovanni Gaetano Altoviti Avila
1745 Flaminio Altoviti Avila, younger son of Giovanni Gaetano
1806 Giovambattista Altoviti Avila
1806 Giovanni Altoviti Avila (only son of Giovambattista)
Around 1750 certain influential scholars and artists had begun wishfully to identify Bindo's portrait as a self-portrait by Raphael. The fallacy was fueled by the period's hunger for artist-likenesses, its worship of Raphael, and dissatisfaction with existing self-portraits in Florence and Rome. The belief grew to such an extent that Altoviti heirs themselves ceased to credit the identity of their own ancestor, and so felt justified in selling the picture to foreigners at an enormous price – as a Raphael self-portrait.
1808 Portrait sold to Johann Metzger, agent for Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria
1810 Royal collection in Munich, displayed at the Hofgartengalarie
Around 1850 certain influential scholars and artists began to doubt the image as a portrait of Raphael. These doubts soon spawned other doubts about Raphael's authorship at all. Half a dozen artists in his circle were then proposed as likelier creators. As David Alan Brown and Jan Van Nimmen observe, "The fall from grace of the Munich picture shows that this and other discredited objects of worship arouse feelings of betrayal, and that adoration in such cases turns into embarrassment and scorn. Neither of Raphael nor by him, the Munich portrait may now truly be said to have had no value." By the early twentieth century the museum itself was ready to deaccession it, and only waited for a good opportunity.
1938 Agnew's, London, acquired by trade from Bavarian State Painting Collections
1938 Duveen Brothers, London, purchased from Agnew's
1940 Samuel H. Kress, purchased from Duveen Brothers, New York
1943 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, gift of Samuel H. Kress
To obtain the Raphael, the chief item traded by Agnew's was a supposed Grünewald (later discredited), which the firm had recently acquired at an estate sale for £600. Agnew's then immediately sold the Raphael to the Duveen firm for £30,000.
Brown and Van Nimmen offer another appendix with thumbnails of more than fifty different reproductive prints from the 18th and 19th centuries made to disseminate Bindo's portrait during the period when it was stoutly accepted as everyone's favorite likeness of Raphael. A small sample of these appears below.
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| Jacob Frey after Domenico Campiglia Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) ca. 1747 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| Angelica Kauffmann Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) ca. 1762-65 etching Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Giovanni Battista Cecchi after Ignazio Hugford Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) 1771 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| Sir Robert Strange Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) 1787 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| Raphael Morghen Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) 1803 etching, engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Wolfgang Flachenecker Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) ca. 1810-21 lithograph British Museum |
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| Ludwig Emil Grimm Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) 1812 etching, engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Heinrich Maria von Hess Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) ca. 1813-17 etching Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Giovanni Farrugia Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) 1822 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| Filippo Cenci Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) ca. 1830 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| Ferdinand Piloty Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) after 1836 lithograph British Museum |
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| James Dickson Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) ca. 1841-42 lithograph British Museum |
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| Thomas Holloway Raphael Self-portrait (actually Bindo Altoviti) 1844 etching, engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |