Important Old Master Paintings

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Lot 67
  • 67

Gaetano Gandolfi San Matteo della Decima near Bologna 1734 - 1802 Bologna

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Description

  • Gaetano Gandolfi
  • Portrait of a Young Woman

  • signed or inscribed on the reverse Gaetano Gandolfi/Decem. 1777

  • oil on canvas

Provenance

Berti, Bologna, before 1936;
Briganti, Rome;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, July 6, 1990, lot 70.

Literature

L. Bianchi, I Gandolfi, Rome 1936, p. 155;
R. Roli, Pittura Bolognese 1650-1800, dal Cignani ai Gandolfi, Bologna 1977, p. 262;
P. Bagni, I Gandolfi, Affreschi Dipinti Bozzetti Disegni, 1992, p. 582, no. 497;
D. Biagi Maino, Gaetano Gandolfi, Turin 1995, p. 373, cat. no. 111, reproduced fig. 122.

Catalogue Note

This charming picture of a pensive young woman is characteristic of the teste di carattere that Gaetano Gandofi produced throughout his career, and which by their number and variety in his oeuvre apparently found a wide and welcoming audience.  He must have found inspiration for them among the works of the Venetian artists of earlier in the century (particularly Rosalba Carriera and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta) whose work he could have know from Bolognese collections but whom he certainly would have seen during his student year in Venice in 1760. 

However, Bagni (see literature below) believed this painting was very probably an actual portrait.  Presumably on the basis of the Berti provenance of the painting, he suggested that it might represent Anna, daughter of Carlo Berti, for whom Gandolfi painted a ceiling at some time in or after 1777 (the year when renovations on Berti's house were completed).  In fact, this canvas appears to be on its original stretcher,  which is dated December 1777, thus lending support to this possibility.