Jacopo Amigoni

Anonymous sale, Milan, Finarte, 28 May 1992, lot 97;
Fondazione Umberto Severi, Carpi;
Anonymous sale, Milan, Sotheby's, 30 November 2004, lot 132, where acquired by the present collector.

A. Scarpa Sonino, Jacopo Amigoni, Soncino 1994, pp. 98-99, cat. no. 17, reproduced in colour.

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The painting is lined and the surface is stable with a suggestion of an old stretcher mark. There is a restored tear through the left hand of the sitter and a repaired damage to the bottom right corner. Restoration to an area lower left is to reduce a pentiment. Under U-V light a small scattering of retouchings can be seen across the surface. The face of the sitter bears a speckled patina made up of small pin-pricks from the granular ground. The remains of an old varnish has caused blanching to the shadow to the front of the coat and an area of background to the left of the sitter's right arm."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This portrait is a characteristic work by the Venetian painter Jacopo Amigoni and can be dated to the artist's English sojourn. Amigoni arrived in England in 1729 and remained there for ten years, except for a brief visit to France in 1736. His fame as a portraitist spread and he received commissions from both the aristocracy and Royal Family. His portrait style successfully blended English and French rococo traditions; compare, for example, his Portrait of Sir Harvey and Lady Smith with their son which was formerly with Colnaghi, London in 1954.¹ 

The sitter has been tentatively identified by Scarpa Sonino as James Howe, a merchant recorded in Leghorn in 1746. The identification was made by comparison with the left-hand figure in a triple portrait by Hugford and Amigoni in York City Art Gallery, which bore an inscription on the reverse of the original canvas identifying the sitters as James Howe ('Merchant at Leghorn'), Richard Thompson (a wine merchant in Portugal) and Benjamin Tilden ('his partner').²  The gentleman portrayed in the present portrait certainly resembles Howe in the York picture, though he is slightly chubbier here and perhaps a little older. The York painting was inscribed with the date 'about 1736' and Scarpa Sonino suggests a similar date here. As Scarpa Sonino has noted, the gentleman's pose echoes that of Howe in the York portrait and his left hand, pointing elegantly to a point outside the picture space, is similar in pose and execution to that of Tilden in the triple-portrait.

1.  Reproduced in R. Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del Settecento, Venice 1960, fig. 60.
2.  Inv. no. 1151; reproduced in Scarpa Sonino, under Literature, p. 98, fig. XI.