Old Masters Day Auction
Old Masters Day Auction
Property from a Dutch Private Collection
Guillaume Courtois, called Guglielmo Cortese
Portrait of a physician, possibly Giovanni Guglielmo Riva (1627–1677), seated half-length, holding a surgical instrument
Lot Closed
July 7, 02:25 PM GMT
Estimate
60,000 - 80,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Dutch Private Collection
Guillaume Courtois, called Guglielmo Cortese
St Hippolyte, Franche-Comté 1628 - 1679 Rome
Portrait of a physician, possibly Giovanni Guglielmo Riva (1627–1677), seated half-length, holding a surgical instrument
oil on canvas, in a period elaborate carved and giltwood frame
unframed: 100.5 x 74.9 cm.; 39½ x 29½ in.
framed: 140.9 x 117.8 cm.; 55½ x 46½ in.
With Rob Smeets, Milan;
Acquired by the present collector at TEFAF in 2007 (all the above as by Carlo Maratta).
F. Petrucci, Pittura di Ritratto a Roma. Il Seicento, Rome 2008, vol. 2, p. 304, under no. 2, reproduced vol. 3, p. 535, fig. 138 (here and above as Courtois).
Please note that this painting is sold with both an original 17th-century gilt frame and a modern reproduction dark frame.
At the time of the sale in 1999, the attribution to Carlo Maratta was endorsed by Stella Rudolph. Francesco Petrucci, in his compendium of Roman portraiture from the seventeenth century, proposes instead to attribute the painting to the French Cortonesque painter Guillaume Courtois, known as il Borgognone. Petrucci, quoting Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco's attribution to Courtois, specifically compares the present sitter's hand, both in its pose and in the handling of paint, as well as the description of the shimmering drapery, to that in Courtois' Allegorical Self-Portrait in the Koelliker Collection in Milan.1
In the 1999 sale catalogue Rudolph suggested that the sitter is one of the foremost professori de Anatomia in Rome, Giovanni Guglielmo Riva, master of the famous anatomists Giovanni Maria Lancisi and Giovanni Baglivi, among others, who attended his School of Anatomy at the Ospedale della Consolazione, Rome. A later portrait of Riva, known only through a poor oval engraving by an anonymous artist, shows a man of more advanced years but with undoubtedly similar facial features. Riva accompanied Cardinal Flavio Chigi (nephew to Pope Alexander VII) on his 1664 visit to Paris as Legate, and was on that occasion appointed surgeon to Louis XIV. Rudolph went on to mention that Riva made a will prior to his departure from Rome, in which his collection of paintings did not include a portrait of himself. However, just prior to his death on 17 October 1677, there are three such portraits listed. One of them, un ritratto di detto Guglielmo con cornice di noce, is very possibly the same as the present painting. A date of 1668–9 on stylistic grounds for the present painting would correspond to the period when Riva was the chief physician to Pope Clement IX.
The sitter appears to be holding a 'volsella', a tweezer like instrument used by surgeons to extract bone fragments from fractures.2 Such medical instruments, attributes that are entirely consistent for a professor of anatomy, were also used to remove gunshot from wounds and specks from the eye.
1 Petrucci 2008, vol. 2, p. 304, reproduced.
2 We are grateful to Stephanie Cornwell for identifying the medical instrument that appears in this painting.