BARTOLOMEO PASSEROTTI | Portrait of Giulio Franchini, three-quarter length, aged 38

Probably commissioned by the family of the sitter and thence by descent until acquired by the present owners.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: The beautiful preservation of this portrait is clear from the fine, even overall craquelure, with only minor narrow borders around the extreme outer edges, presumably where the original tacking edges were retained and carefully supported in relining. A few minor little retouchings can be seen around the outer edges, for instance at the centre of the left edge. It was not possible to see the back but clearly the painting has had a long, peaceful, and stable history, with a careful lining. The rich, even condition of the background glazing is remarkable, as are the deep unworn shadows of the drapery with all its fine detail. One small horizontal retouching in the drapery near the left base corner looks almost as though it was touching out a collector's mark or brief inscription. A small square cleaning test has clearly recently been done on the lower left wrist by the ruffled cuff. The present varnish however is finely integrated, with any disturbance apparently gratuitous. There may be one or two minute old retouches in the moustache or beard, with faint horizontal indentations possibly near the mouth and the eyes. A few other recent small retouchings can be seen under ultra violet light in the dark drapery of the cloak on either side, with another in the lower right background and very occasionally around the outer edges, but these are minor imperfections. The magnificent overall condition of this painting must reflect an exceptionally pure, virtually untouched, historical background. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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Elegant, confident and successful, the Bolognese gentleman Giulio Franchini is portrayed by Passerotti at the age of 38. As the inscription attests, he led 200 footmen in the victorious battle against the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571 during the reign of Pius V and was later to head the personal cavalry escort of Gregory XIII, also a native of Bologna.¹ Giulio's military success, alluded to by his sword, is counterbalanced by the elegance of his fashionable attire and by the exceptional quality of Passerotti's handling. The painting should be considered nothing less than a masterpiece of sixteenth-century portraiture, painted at the peak of the artist's illustrious career. By 1572 Passerotti was the pre-eminent artist in Bologna and was commissioned to portray Pope Gregory XIII himself, though the pose of the sitter in that work, today in Gotha, is a little more conventional than that of the present work, as one might expect for a papal portrait.² Giulio's pose in the present work, however, is absolutely characteristic of Passerotti's portraiture in the mid-1570s, with the distinctive maroon background lending such richness to the scene. A similar half-turned body, the sitter's mannered left hand raised and pointing mid-conversation, a glistening sword hanging from his hip, is found in the Portrait of a man with a dog in Poitiers (fig. 1).³ So too is the pose found in the portrait from a few years later in Leipzig (fig. 2).⁴ Neither of those two portraits can boast sitters quite as handsome as Giulio, nor such expensive gold-embroidered silk clothes, described with the care and detail so typical of Passerotti's interest in color, texture, and surface.

With his right hand Giulio very deliberately holds up his over-garment to reveal a gold medal on which we find an image of the warrior Saint George slaying the dragon.⁵ In 1603 Giulio was to die without issue and left to the city of Bologna the sum of 600 scudi, which was used to issue such a gold medal worth 50 scudi to the winner of a joust held annually in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna in the early afternoon of the Sunday before Lent, to encourage young Bolognese noblemen to join the military. 



1. Gregory XIII was not elected Pope until 1572, the year after the date given upper left, so the part of the inscription which describes Giulio's achievements must post-date 1571 by perhaps a couple of years.
2. See A. Ghirardi, Passerotti, Rimini 1990, pp. 179-80m cat. no. 35, reproduced in color plate V.
3. Ghirardi 1990, pp. 169-70, cat. no. 19, reproduced.
4. Ghirardi 1990, pp. 247-48, cat. no. 74, reproduced in color plate XXI.
5. The reverse is recorded as showing a heraldic flag bearing two keys and the inscription: July Franchini munus ("gift of Giulio Franchini").