Giuseppe Baldrighi

Le Comte More;
Sale, Brussels, Galerie Fievez, 11-12 April 1929, lot 190;
Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 21 May 1998, lot 129A (as Louis-Michel van Loo), where acquired by the present owner.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The canvas has an old lining which is still ensuring a secure structural support and has successfully secured the overall craquelure pattern. Paint Surface The paint surface has a reasonably even varnish layer. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows that the varnish layers have discoloured and also shows a number of retouchings, the most significant of which are: 1) retouchings on the right cheek and above the right eye of the wife of Antonio Ghedini, 2) extensive retouchings on the face of the child second from the lower right of the composition, and an area on the forehead of the child in the lower right, which measures approximately 3 x 1 cm, 3) retouchings in the hair of the elder daughter on the right of the composition. There may well be other retouchings beneath the old varnish layers which are not identifiable under ultra-violet light. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in reasonably good and stable condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This intimate and sympathetic group portrait affords a fascinating glimpse of  life and the international nature of both art and trade during the Age of Enlightenment. As the letters on the cabinet in the background attest, the sitters are Antonio Ghedini and his family from Parma, where Ghedini was an official cloth merchant to the Bourbon court. He also had strong ties to Manchester and England, then one of the most important producers of manufactured cloth in Europe. Other documents mention Manchester and an important industrial families from this period involved in cloth manufacture, the Booths. As befits the family of a leading cloth merchant, the Ghedini family are suitably modishly attired: his wife wears a brocaded silk open robe with foliate stripes, salmon-pink furbelows and matching stomacher.  Her elegant dress is made from a fabric called Melandri which was produced in Lyon as well as the Veneto and in Spitalfields in London. Her fichu is in the contemporary Venetian fashion.

The attribution to Giuseppe Baldrighi was first suggested by Alastair Laing at the time of the 1998 sale (see Provenance). Baldrighi was court painter to the Bourbon Duke Philip of Parma (1720-1765), a post to which he had been appointed in 1756. Before this the portrait had been ascribed to the French court painter Louis Michel van Loo. The confusion is perhaps understandable, for Baldrighi's style was formed in Paris, where the Duke's minister Guillaume du Tillot had sent him for training. In Paris Baldrighi would been able to work alongside or at least seen the works of painters such as Boucher, De la Tour, Liotard and Nattier, and in 1754 he was received into the prestigious Académie. Baldrighi's own large conversation piece of Duke Philip and his French wife Louise-Elizabeth and their family of 1758 onwards (Galleria Nazionale, Parma)  shows that by the time of his return to Parma in 1756 he had successfully assimilated the style of French painters such as Van Loo. The present work, however, eschews the cold formalities of court portraiture for a more intimate style, best paralleled in Baldrighi's Self-portrait with two friends Callani and Ferrari of around 1760 or the slightly later Self-portrait with his wife (both now in Parma, Galleria Nazionale)¹. A dating for the present portrait is provided by the medal held by the oldest boy in the centre foreground. This is the medal struck by Anton Wideman commemorating the marriage of Maria Amelia Hapsburg to Philip's successor Duke Ferdinand of Parma on the 27 June 1769, thus providing a terminus post quem for the painting itself. By comparison with the Ducal family group painted maybe twenty years earlier, the design is markedly more sophisticated and complex, its informality presaging the work of another famous visitor to Parma in the 1770s, the german Johann Zoffany.



1. For which see L. Fornari Schianchi, Galleria Nazionale di Parma. Catalogo delle opere. Il Settecento, Milan 2000, pp. 98-101, nos. 703, 706-7, reproduced.