Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna

Prince Eugène de Beauharnais (1781-1824), later Duke von Leuchtenberg, probably acquired by him whilst Viceroy in Italy during the first decade of the 19th Century;
Thence by descent to his second son and heir, Maximilian (1817-52), Duke von Leuchtenberg, Munich and later St. Petersburg;
Thence by descent to his grandson Georgi Nikolaevich (1872-1929), Duke von Leuchtenberg, before 1904 (see Literature) until circa 1914;
With Galerie Charles Brunner, Paris, January 1914;
Trotti, Paris, 1932 (according to a Witt Library mount);
Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 13 January 1987, lot 111 (as "School of Guercino");
Kimbell Art Museum, Acquisition, 1991, Gift (partial and promised) of Edmund P. Pillsbury, in honour of the Museum's 20th Year Anniversary.

St. Petersburg, Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, 1850-1910;
Paris, Galerie Charles Brunner, January 1914, no. 24;
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Age of Correggio and the Carracci, May 1987 (ex-catalogue);
Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, & Cento, Pinacoteca Civica and Chiesa del Rosario, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino 1591-1666, 6 September - 10 November 1991, no. 68;
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Guercino: Master Painter of the Baroque, 15 March - 17 May 1992, no. 32.

J.N. Muxel, Verzeichniß der Bildergalerie seiner Königlichen Hoheit des Prinzes Eugen, Herzogs von Leuchtenberg, in München, 1835, 1843 and 1851 editions., p. 23 ("Bildnis eines Rechtsgelehrten im schwarze Kleidung und weissem Halskragen, mit einem Buche in der Hand. Lebensgross. Halbe Fig.");
A. Néoustroieff, "Les tableaux de la Collection du duc G.N. de Leuchtenberg, École Italienne", in Les Trésors d'art en Russie, vol. IV, 1904, p. 35 (in Russian) and p. 47 (in Fench), reproduced plate 36;
Quatrième Catalogue de la Galerie Charles Brunner, 11 Rue Royale, Paris, January 1914, cat. no. 24, reproduced;
L. Salerno, I dipinti del Guercino, Rome 1988, pp. 212-3, cat. no. 120 bis, reproduced in colour;
R.H. Helmholz, "The Library in Guercino's Portrait of a Lawyer", in Accademia Clementina. Atti e Memorie, nos. 30-31, Bologna 1991, pp. 184-8, reproduced (where the legal texts stacked behind the sitter are identified);
D.M. Stone, Guercino. Catalogo completo, Florence 1991, p. 134, cat. no. 111, reproduced in colour;
D. Mahon, in Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino 1591-1666, exhibition calagoue, Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, & Cento, Pinacoteca Civica and Chiesa del Rosario, 6 September - 10 November 1991, pp. 194-5, cat. no. 68, reproduced in colour;
"Calendar", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXIII, no. 1063, October 1991, p. 739, reproduced fig. 84;
Guercino: Master Painter of the Baroque, exhibition catalogue, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 15 March - 17 May 1992, cat. no. 32, reproduced;
B. Ghelfi, Il libro dei conti del Guercino 1629-1666, Venice 1997, p. 68, under no. 62.

ENGRAVED:
By J.N. Muxel in 1837.

It was after this painting's restoration subsequent to its appearance on the art market in 1987 that it portrait was universally recognised as an important addition to Guercino's oeuvre. The painting can be dated, on grounds of style, to 1626-28. Guercino painted relatively few portraits in his career and with the exception of a couple they were for the most part painted in an official vein: compare, for example, his rather formal Portrait of Pope Gregory XV of circa 1622-23 in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, or his Portrait of Cardinal Francesco Cennini of 1625 in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (reproduced in Salerno, see Literature, p. 172, cat. no. 91, and p. 190, cat. no. 108). This portrait of a lawyer, who has been convincingly identified as Francesco Righetti, is considerably more naturalistic and more spirited than either of the sitters in these pictures, and may be more closely compared to Guercino’s Portrait of a bearded man in the Pinacoteca Estense, Modena, datable to circa 1623-4 (Salerno, op. cit., p. 406, cat. no. 348, and reproduced in colour in Stone, see Literature, p. 117, cat. no. 94). In the Modena portrait, as in the present work, it is clear that the artist had some affinity with his subjects: it has been hypothesised that the Modena picture is of the brother of Lorenzo Dondini, a priest of San Biagio di Cento, and the sitter in the present portrait has been convincingly identified as Francesco Righetti, an important lawyer from Cento (the latter identification was first proposed by Prisco Bagni).

Francesco Righetti (1595-1673) was the son of a member of the Pannini family, for whom Guercino had frescoed the family palazzo in Cento in 1615-17 (Salerno, op. cit., pp. 102-7, cat. no. 24). Though Righetti would have been only 20 years old at the time, we know he was impressed by Guercino’s works and indeed went on to commission at least two other paintings from the artist: a half-length Mary Madgalene in 1632 (formerly in Carlo Croce collection, Philadelphia; Stone, op. cit., p. 151, cat. no. 129, reproduced in colour) and a Saint Joseph in 1641 (unidentified; see Ghelfi, under Literature, p. 109, no. 256). Righetti, who held a doctorate in law, served as a member of the city council and as governor of Cento, Guercino’s own native city. It was as a lawyer, however, that Righetti gained a considerable reputation and it is therefore appropriate that he should have chosen Guercino to paint him in the early stages of what was to be a very successful career (he would have been in his early thirties when Guercino painted this portrait). As Helmholz, Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, has observed (see Literature), the books which appear to have been casually placed one on top of the other in this portrait were chosen by Guercino (or more probably by Righetti himself) with a specific function in mind. In addition to the basic texts such as the Codex Justiniani and the Decretales of Gregory IX (1234) which were fundamental for legal practice, Righetti’s library includes modern manuals, commentaries, and certain volumes that have been singled out as representative of the kind of library he must have had. Righetti practiced law within the tradition of the ius commune (a combination of canon and Roman law that was developed in the 11^th and 12^th centuries at the University of Bologna) and he is shown holding a widely popular text on criminal law, Justus Clarus’ Practica Criminalis of circa 1575. This is not accidental for it shows Righetti as a practising lawyer rather than as a teacher. Indeed, as Helmholz has pointed out, Righetti’s known published works are based on litigation cases in which he was actually involved, and this aspect of his career seems entirely consistent with the image Guercino has portrayed of him.

Prince Eugène de Beauharnais (1781-1824), to whom this picture once belonged, was the step-son of Napoleon Bonaparte: his mother, Josephine, married Napoleon after the death of his father Viscount Alexandre (1760-94). A year after the proclamation of the Empire, Napoleon appointed Eugène Viceroy of Italy and it was probably at this time, during the first decade of the 19^th Century, that he acquired this painting to add to his collection. He married the daughter of the king of Bavaria, Augusta Amalia, on 14 January 1806 and after the fall of Napoleon in 1814 retired to Munich where he had assumed the title of Duke von Leuchtenberg. After his death the collection passed to his second son and heir Maximilian (1817-52) who, after his marriage to Maria Nikolaevna Grand Duchess of Russia in 1839, moved and settled in St. Petersburg. The picture is published in 1904 (see Literature) as part of the collection belonging to Maximilian’s grandson Georgi Nikolaevich (1872-1929), who assumed the title of Duke von Leuchtenberg in 1890: he almost certainly inherited them from his father, Maximilian’s first son Nikolai Maximilanovich (1843-91), who had moved to Paris and died there in 1891.