Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap

Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap, also known as Man with a Red Cap, was painted by Titian in about 1516. It is part of the Frick Collection in New York City.

Date

Two portraits of young men have been ascribed to the years immediately following Titian's stay at Padua : namely the Man with a Red Cap and the Man with a Glove. The Frick Collection dates the former picture slightly later.

Provenance

Although the sitter has not been identified, this portrait was apparently well known, at least in the seventeenth century, and Carlo Dolci painted a copy of the figure into the background of his Martyrdom of Saint Andrew.
The painting passed through several private hands before being auctioned by Christie's in 1906 and purchased by Sir Hugh Lane, from whom it was eventually acquired by Henry Clay Frick in 1915. The art critic Charles Ricketts, writing in 1910, recalled the 1906 rediscovery of a portrait by Titian: