Vittore Ghislandi, called Fra Galgario

Private collection, Germany, since the late 1950s.

The following condition report is provided by Rebecca Gregg who is an external expert and not an employee of Sotheby's. The original canvas appears in good condition, lined onto an open weave secondary support. The adhesion between these layers appears stable although there is some minor lifting at the turn over edge. The overall tension is slightly slack and there is a minor planar deformation along the left edge. The oval stretcher is sound and all the keys are present. The paint layers appear in good condition, there is a tiny loss located to the left of the sitter along an area which has previously been retouched and evidence of very minor losses to a restored area at the lower edge. There appear to be at least two campaigns of restoration present. There are areas of over-paint located in the lower quadrant, most noticeably the over-paint on the sitter's hands has become discoloured and running vertically to the right of the sitter. This campaign appears below the varnish layer. There is a more recent campaign in evidence above this varnish, this retouching is smaller and appears to be adjusting the previous campaign and delineating some of the composition, such as along the contours of the sitter's right shoulder. There is a discoloured varnish layer present and evidence of an ingrained dirt layer, visible in the impasto of the paint layers, between the varnish and the paint. The painting was examined in the frame.
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For this flamboyant portrait of a young gentleman, seemingly in his first years of adulthood, Galgario has opted for the oval format, that which he favoured for the majority of his formal portraits. Although unidentified, the sitter is clearly of some social stature, judging by his elaborate dress and confident pose. It is strikingly similar to the artist's portrait of the Conte Flaminio Tassi,¹ one of his best-known works. With the present picture, executed during his full maturity, Galgario demonstrates his supreme confidence with his art form, the brushstrokes on the garments done with particularly noticeable bravura.

Vittore Ghislandi entered the Order of the Minims in the monastery of Galgario in Bergamo in 1702, at the age of forty-seven, and henceforward was known by the name of the saint after whom the monastery was named. He had been born in Bergamo, into a family of painters, and he spent time in the studios of several professional painters there, including those of Giacomo Cotta and Bartolommeo Bianchi. The greatest influence on his art was however to be found in Venice. Here in the 1690s he entered the studio of Sebastiano Bombelli where he acquired a palette and technique that he took back home and blended with the more formal Bergamesque tradition of portraiture, producing a style that became entirely his own and that found him fame both home and abroad, notably with Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1774), perhaps the most formidable collector of the 18^th century.

We are grateful to Dott. Francesco Frangi for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs. Dott. Frangi considers this a late work, datable to the 1730s.

1.  See M.C. Gozzoli, Vittore Ghislandi detto Fra' Galgario, Bergamo 1981, reproduced in colour p. 55.