Francesco Trevisani

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 25 July 1962, lot 92 (as English School, 18th century), for £45, to T.W. Atkinson;

Sabih Aykoler (b. 1926), London;

By whose Estate sold, Oxford, Mallam’s, 10 July 2024, lot 525 (as Continental School);

Where acquired.

This rediscovered self-portrait closely relates to a picture of larger dimensions, which was previously in the collection of Benjamin Thaw Senior (1859–1937), New York.¹ The hat worn by Trevisani is not dissimilar to the one he dons in the Self-Portrait in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence,² of which at least two autograph versions are known. One is in the collection of the Graf von Schönborn, Pommersfelden,³ and the other sold at Christie's London in 2014 for £12,500.⁴

We are grateful to Dr Karin Wolfe for endorsing the attribution to Francesco Trevisani on the basis of digital images. She dates this picture to the end of the 1680s, when Trevisani was active in Rome.

¹ Oil on canvas, 76 x 61 cm.; FONDAZIONE ZERI | ONLINE CATALOGUES : Trevisani Francesco, Autoritratto di Francesco Trevisani.

² Inv. no. 1817; oil on canvas, 74 x 57.5 cm.; F.R. DiFederico, Francesco Trevisani: Eighteenth-Century Painter in Rome: A Catalogue Raisonné, Washington, D.C. 1977, p. 72, no. P1, reproduced pl. 96.

³ Oil on canvas, 81 x 64 cm.; FONDAZIONE ZERI | CATALOGHI ONLINE : Trevisani Francesco, Autoritratto di Francesco Trevisani.

⁴ Oil on canvas, 74.9 x 62.8 cm.; Francesco Trevisani (Capodistria 1659-1746 Rome), Portrait of the artist, half-length, in a fur-trimmed coat and cap, holding a brush in his right hand | Christie's.