Portrait of a Young Man, after 1720

Provenance

Barberini Collection, Rome.[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome), by 1929.[2] purchased 1932 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.

Exhibition History

1929

Il Settecento Italiano, Palazzo della Biennale, Venice, no. 28.

1932

An Exhibition of Italian Paintings Lent by Mr. Samuel H. Kress of New York to Museums, Colleges, and Art Associations, travelling exhibition, 24 venues, 1932-1935, mostly unnumbered catalogues, p. 33 and p. 37, repro., as by Vittore Ghislandi.

1938

Exhibition of Venetian Paintings from the Fifteenth Century through the Eighteenth Century, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1938, no. 27, repro.

1938

Special Exhibition of Venetian Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. Seattle Art Museum; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, August-October 1938, no catalogue.

1938

Tiepolo and His Contemporaries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1938, no. 1, repro.

1939

Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 143.

Technical Summary

The support is a loosely woven plain-weave fabric. The paint was applied rapidly, wet-into-wet and has a smooth surface with only a few slightly impastoed passages. The hair and face were finished after the background was painted. The highlights, planar changes, and modifications to contours to enhance three-dimensionality were created with glazes applied over the basic flesh color. X-radiographs reveal another head slightly lower than the present one; this position, as well as the presence of cusping only along the top edge, suggests that the first composition was much larger. The underlying head faces left in three-quarter view with an upward gaze and wears a bulky cloth cap. A dark brown layer may be an isolating layer between the two pictures or the ground layer.

The varnish is slightly discolored and hazy. The painting has been considerably inpainted, most probably to compensate for extensive abrasion. The painting was relined, discolored varnish was removed, and the painting was restored by Stephen Pichetto in 1932. The inpainting was adjusted in 1959, by Mario Modestini, and in 1966, probably by Frank Sullivan.

Bibliography

1941

Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 76-77, no. 213.

1942

Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 243, repro. 11

1959

Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 228, repro.

1965

Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 58.

1968

National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 50, repro.

1972

Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 84.

1973

Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 106, fig. 198.

1975

European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 152, repro.

1979

Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:206; 2:pl. 142, 142A.

1982

Gozzoli, Maria Cristina. "Vittore Ghislandi detto Fra' Galgario." In I pittori bergamaschi 5, I (1982): 127, no. 173, 173, fig. 6.

1985

European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 174, repro.

1996

De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 113-116, repro. 114.

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