Elisabetta Sirani Bologna 1638 - 1665 Place Unknown

The painting is stronger, slightly warmer and more colourful in tone than the illustration suggests. The canvas is unlined and the paint surface is in excellent condition, retaining its original impasto and brushwork: the delicate hatching on the boy's face contrasts with the creamy handling of, for example, the white sleeve. The painting has been recently cleaned, restored and revarnished. The background was more thinly painted and the red ground is showing through in places, but the painting is in good condition overall. Inspection under ultra-violet light reveals localised retouchings in the background, some of it towards the edges, and a larger area of restoration (8 x 2 cm. approx.) along the left edge. On the boy himself, some of his hair has been gone over but otherwise only minimal localised retouchings and strengthenings are visible, none of which are significant. The restoration has been sensitively carried out and is invisible to the naked eye. The painting could be hung as is. The black and gold painted wood frame is suitable and in good condition.
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Elisabetta Sirani was the daughter of the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani and although she was not a direct pupil of Guido Reni, her father had entered his studio in the 1630s, probably around the same time that Elisabetta was born. A talented painter, Elisabetta's artistic career was short-lived for she died prematurely at the age of twenty-seven, apparently after being poisoned by an embittered servant (if one is to believe the account of the biographer Malvasia who was her mentor and a close friend of Giovanni Andrea Sirani). Although certainly in the minority, she was not unique in being a female artist in Bologna: Lavinia Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi, both daughters of painters, had established themselves as artists in their own right. Elisabetta ran her studio in Bologna rather like an open home, in which she entertained her guests with singing and conversation, and her reputation spread beyond Emilia Romagna largely thanks to Malvasia's words of praise in describing her as "the glory of the female sex, the gem of Italy, the sun of Europe".¹

From 1657 Elisabetta meticulously recorded all her paintings and commissions in a book called the Nota delle pitture, rather like Guercino had done in his Libro de' Conti, and this forms the basis of Malvasia's account of Elisabetta's oeuvre. She is better known for her religious and mythological scenes but Elisabetta's activity as a portrait painter is attested to by the numerous portraits listed in the Nota, though only a couple have been firmly identified (largely due to their being signed). This painting probably dates from circa 1650 or shortly afterwards (which may explain why it is omitted from the Nota) but it shares elements with her Portrait of Vincenzo Ferdinando Ranuzzi as Cupid in the Narodowe Museum, Warsaw, which is signed and dated 1663.²  Both are portraits of children in half-length, shown looking out at the viewer with gently-tilted heads, and both are engaged in some minor activity; that is, holding or reaching for something. Although the little boy's costume here is much simpler than Ranuzzi's embroidered red coat and feathered hat, the simplicity of his dress underlines the naturalism of the portrait: the child appears pensive, his expression sweet but serious, as if concentrating on the task of arranging flowers in a vase.

Prof. Daniele Benati has endorsed the attribution to Elisabetta Sirani and has suggested a date of execution just before 1650 (letter dated 30 April 2004). Prof. Benati has tentatively suggested that the painting may be identifiable with one of a pair of portraits of children recorded in the house of the senator Albergati in Bologna: in one a child "tiene una sfera in mano [grande] quasi quanto il vero" and in the other "con fiori".³  The boy's position, slightly off-centre and pointing to the right, might suggest that this portrait did indeed once have a pendant. The pairing of the two subjects described above - a boy with a sphere and another with a vase of flowers - is entirely plausible given these symbols' traditional association with vanitas themes, and the boy's contemplative air might further strengthen an argument for such an identification.

1  "... la gloria del sesso donnesco, la gemma d'Italia, il sole della Europa, Elisabetta Sirani" (C.C. Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, Vite dei Pittori Bolognesi, 1678, ed. M. Brascaglia, Bologna 1971, p. 608).
2  Reproduced in colour by F. Frisoni, in ed. E. Negro & M. Pirondini, La Scuola di Guido Reni, Modena 1992, p. 361, fig. 344, and more recently in A. Modesti, Elisabetta Sirani. Una virtuosa del Seicento bolognese, Bologna 2004, p. 275, fig. 162.
3  M. Oretti, Le pitture che si ammirano nelli palagi e case de' nobili della città di Bologna, MS. B 104, Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale, p. 110, cited in E. Calbi & D. Scaglietti Kelescian, Marcello Oretti e il patrimonio artistico privato bolognese, Bologna 1984, p. 177.