Provenance as a history of change: from Caliari in Scotland to Tintoretto in America: The commercial and connoisseurial trajectories of a Venetian portrait

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts owns a Portrait of a Young Man now attributed to Domenico Robusti, son of Jacopo Tintoretto. This article documents for the first time the painting’s earlier provenance and its later arrival on the London art market. The hitherto unexamined papers of John Waldie, a wealthy Scottish collector, record his acquisition of the portrait at Venice in 1836 as a work by Carlo Caliari, the son of Paolo Veronese. In 1927 the portrait was sold, still as Caliari, by Waldie’s descendants to London art dealers Agnew’s for £800. Following expert advice from Wilhelm von Bode, Tancred Borenius, Lionello Venturi and Charles Ricketts, Agnew’s reattributed it to Jacopo Tintoretto before selling it to the Boston Museum for $75,000 (about £15,000). A comparison of these two key moments shows how art trade and connoisseurship had a joint impact on the history of the painting.