Prospero Mallerini

Art market, Brussels, by 2024 (as Antwerp School, late 17^th to early 18^th century);

Where acquired by the present owner.

Recorded as an architect as well as a painter, Prospero Mallerini remains an elusive figure. Few biographical details about the artist are known, but a document relating to his earliest extant work, the Portrait of a Capuchin monk, said to be Fra' Viatore of 1794 in the Museo Francescano, Rome, states that it was commissioned from 'un pittore di Martinengo': a town in the province of Bergamo, Lombardy. Despite this, Mallerini seems to have been active in Rome for most of his career.

Mallerini was patronized by the Barberini family; in 1802, he signed and dated a Family portrait with don Carlo Barberini and in 1837 a sferisterio was built upon his designs in the Palazzo Barberini at the Quattro Fontane.¹ The Family portrait incorporates still life elements that are depicted with astonishing naturalism, as seems to be characteristic of Mallerini's work. 

The present trompe l'œil painting is closely related to a relief of the Virgin and Child of around 1475 by Andrea della Robbia, that is today in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.²

¹ For the portrait, see A. Busiri Vici, 'Un singolare gruppo di casa Barberini del 1802', in L'Urbe, vol. XXXIII, 1970, no. 3, pp. 1–8, figs 1–14.

² Inv. no. Bargello Robbiane 74; glazed terracotta, 135 x 92 cm.; https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0900383749.