Ottavio Maria Leoni

Probably Ottavio Leoni,
by descent to his son Ippolito Leoni;
Probably Cardinal Scipione Borghese;
Probably Prince Marcantonio Borghese, 1642 (according to Giovanni Baglione);
Probably Jean Bouteroue Marquis d' Aubigny, Paris, sold in 1747;
J.S. Newberry, Jr., 1949;
F. Kleinberger, New York;
Norbert L.H. Roesler,
his sale, New York, Christie's, 31 May 1990, lot 18
 

Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, Fifty Drawings from the Collection of John S. Newberry, Jr., 1949, pp. 19-20, no. 25

J.T. Spike, Baroque Portraiture in Italy: Works from North American Collections, Sarasota 1985, p. 18

Window mounted. Overall in quite good condition. The paper slightly faded. One pin point hole, and little and occasional foxing. A tiny light brown stain on the left eyebrow. A tiny repaired small hole near his mouth to the right. Sold mounted and framed in a 19th century black frame.
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This characteristic portrait by Leoni belongs to a corpus of four hundred drawings by the artist and some by his son Ippolito, which according to Giovanni Baglione were in the collection of the Prince Marcantonio Borghese (1601-1658), in 1642.¹  The biography of Baglione is the only contemporary commentary on the artist's life.²  Baglione informs us that Ottavio Leoni was the leading portraitist of his time, in both drawings and paintings, but hardly any of the numerous painted portraits by the artist that are mentioned in old inventories, many of them made for his patron Scipione Borghese, have been identified.³

Baglione's biography of the artist emphasises the total faithfulness of these portraits, done from life, and as John Spike noted, 'he drew popes and children alike', regardless of any social differences or status, with great spontaneity, 'at rest during a moment in their daily rounds'.⁴  Spike has described how these drawings must have remained in the artist's possession, explaining how some four hundred drawings, executed over a fifteen-year span, could have acquired a single sequential sequence of numberings.⁵  It seems that on 9 October 1630, shortly after Ottavio's sudden death, all the drawings that he left to his son, Ippolito, and all the paintings left to his wife, were sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese.⁶

¹  G. Baglione, Le vite de' pittori, scultori, architetti ed intagliatori, dal ponteficato di Gregorio XIII dal 1572, fino a'tempi di Papa Urbano VIII nel 1642, Rome 1642, p. 321
²  Ibid, pp. 321-322
³  C.R. Robbin, 'Scipione Borghese's acquisition of paintings and drawings by Ottavio Leoni', The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 138, July 1996, pp. 453-454
⁴  J.T. Spike, op. cit., Sarasota 1985, p. 12
⁵  Ibid, p. 14
⁶  Robbin, op. cit., p. 458, under Appendix, III