Domenico Fetti

Anonymous sale, Prato, Farsettiarte, 14 May 2021, lot 56 (as Lombard School, Late 17th Century);

Where acquired by the present owner.

This compelling bust-length portrait–recently identified by Dr. Francesco Petrucci as an addition to Domenico Fetti’s oeuvre–demonstrates the remarkable expressive force and psychological intensity for which the artist is celebrated. Petrucci dates the work to circa 1614, just before Fetti’s move to Mantua from Rome, when the young artist was around twenty-five years old and in the prime of his innovation.¹ 

Fetti’s bravura application of paint here exemplifies his virtuosity, with brushwork varying from dense impasto, feathery strokes, and long flowing lines that demonstrate his mastery of texture and form. The dramatic interplay of light and shadow, recalling the influence of Caravaggio, amplify the striking immediacy of his gaze and heighten the composition’s introspective force. The remarkable spontaneity of the pose and the man’s unpretentious dress–the flat white collar and style of jacket date the costume to the second decade of the seventeenth century–convey an impression of informality rarely expressed in commissioned portraits. Indeed, the intensity and introspective focus of the man’s self-possessed gaze suggest that the present work is a self-portrait, recalling those with similar characteristics by Borgianni (Rome, Accademia di San Luca), Bernini (Madrid, Prado), Simon Vouet (Lyon, Musee des Beaux-Arts), and Pietro da Cortona (Ajaccio, Musee Fesch). 

Though no other self-portraits by Fetti have been definitively identified, seventeenth-century documents testify to their existence. In a letter dated 20 March 1680 addressed to Apollonio Bassetti, Secretary to Grand Duke Cosimo III, the Florentine art historian Filippo Baldinucci mentioned a self-portrait “rendered freely and beautiful” (“fatto di colpi e bellissimo”) which he later cited in his “Nota dei ritratti” of 1681 as “by the hand of Domenico Fetti, an excellent painter”.² A second self-portrait was recorded in a Venetian lawyer’s collection in July 1671, as reported by Paolo del Sera in letters addressed to Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici; Del Sera, who was both an artist and a connoisseur of Venetian art, was unsuccessful in his attempt to acquire the painting for the Cardinal’s collection of artist self-portraits.³

The verso of the original unlined canvas bears an indistinct inscription, possibly by a collector or the artist himself, of what appears to be a pair of superimposed initials (possibly “DF" surmounted with a "C") and the letter “G”. As remarked by Petrucci, the present work is a high-quality portrait–characterized by a notable ease in the application of paint with decisive, confident strokes–that reflects the qualities of Roman painting during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. 

¹ Dr. Petrucci's essay about the present work is available upon request.

² Quoted in E.A. Safarik, Fetti, Milan 1990, p. 303, under cat. no. P63; the painting was likely shown to Baldinucci at the Ducal Palace by Archduchess Isabella Clara, wife of Carlo II Gonzaga.

³ Quoted in E.A. Safarik 1990, p. 323, under cat. no. P159.