By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CITY HALL — Rudy Giuliani has returned to City Hall. Sort of.
The former Republican mayor's official portrait was unveiled at a ceremony at City Hall Tuesday, five years after it was commissioned.
The three-quarter length oil painting by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler features Giuliani looking jovial and years younger, with a smooth forehead and wide, dimpled smile.
He wears a striped black suit, white shirt, red patterned tie and an American flag on his left lapel, and stands with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand casually draped over a staircase banister.
"Why didn't you paint him in a Yankees hat?" Mayor Michael Bloomberg joked after he and his predecessor lifted a black velvet drape for the grand reveal.
This gave Giuliani the opportunity to later rib Bloomberg for the Yankees' recent loss, noting that he left office with four World Series rings under his belt — Bloomberg has just one.
"By my calculations — particularly if you're supporting this term limit thing — you've got three years," he challenged.
Before the unveiling, Bloomberg heaped praise on Giuliani, calling him "America's Mayor" and crediting him for turning the once crime-ridden city around.
"Rudy Giuliani was somebody who really made this city immeasurably better than when he found it," Bloomberg said.
Giuliani, meanwhile, said he was reticent about posing for the portrait and said he'd needed some prodding from his wife.
"I'm superstitious about portraits. They're for dead people," he said.
The painting was commissioned in 2005 and took three sittings, from Feb. 2006 through early 2010, Kinstler said.
Kinstler, who has painted the portraits of seven presidents and two Supreme Court justices, as well as John Wayne and Tony Bennett (who was on hand for the unveiling), said he felt completely at ease with Giuliani.
He described the former presidential hopeful as "a people person" and someone who smiles with ease.
He noted the portrait also has an historical link.
The staircase in the painting is a real one, located in the building, and was used for the first time by the thousands of New Yorkers who came to pay homage to Abraham Lincoln when his body lay in state, he said.
The portrait will now hang alongside more than 100 images of politicians and military leaders that line the walls of City Hall.
