Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavaliere d'Arpino

With Jean-Luc Baroni, London;
From whom acquired by the present collector in 1990.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This portrait on canvas has a thin glue lining. There are two round losses in the upper right background, and other losses around both eyes. The actual pupils of both eyes are undamaged, but there are restorations immediately to the left of the eye socket and forehead on the left, and in the shadowed part of the nose to the left of the eye on the right. In the earlobe, the jaw, the chin and upper neck there are retouches. There is a visible absence of retouching in much of the remainder of the picture, which is in good condition despite the restorations mentioned. It is recommended that the existing restorations be improved, as they are poorly handled and quite visible to the naked eye.
"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This hitherto unpublished Portrait of a pope has been described by Herwarth Röttgen as a "marvellous picture".¹  It is a highly representative portrait from Cavaliere d'Arpino's late career, and has been dated by Röttgen to circa 1630. Though the identification of the sitter remains unclear, it would appear to be a historicizing depiction of an earlier pontiff; the pope's beardless face indicates that he lived centuries before the execution of the painting, as the habit of wearing a beard did not enter into papal tradition until circa 1500.  Röttgen has offered a tentative identification as that of Innocent III, born Lotario dei Conti di Segni (1198-1216), one of the most famous popes of the Middle Ages. Indeed, the tight, slender face and long nose corresponds to the depiction of Innocent III in his effigy at the monastery of San Benedetto in Subiaco, near Rome.

The figures in Arpino's paintings from this late period in his career are characterized by a more intense stylization and elongation of faces and features. The facial type of this subject may be compared to others from the same period of the artist's career, particularly those painted in the Roman church of Santa Maria di Loreto (see H. Röttgen, Il cavalier Giuseppe Cesari D'Arpino, Un grande pittore nello splendore della fama e nell' incostanza della fortuna, Rome 2002, p. 453, cat. no. 228). Similarly Arpino's Portrait of an Anonymous Cardinal (Francesco Barberini?) (see Röttgen 2002, cat. no. 236) employs a similar bust-length format, elongated features, and distant gaze.

Giuseppe Cesari, called the Cavaliere d'Arpino, was the leading painter in Rome in the final decades of the 16th century. He belonged to a family of painters: his father, Muzio Cesari, was an artist as was his brother, Bernardino, who later became his principal assistant. He later entered the studio of Niccolò Circignani, and was quickly promoted from garzone to junior painter on the team which was frescoing part of the Vatican Loggie for Pope Gregory XVIII, and this while still in his teens. Shortly thereafter Arpino was working as an independent artist, and from very early in his career he enjoyed an elite and important clientele. Although largely employed in ambitious decorative schemes, including a series of decorative friezes at the Palazzo del Quirnale (since destroyed), as well as still extant frescoes in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, it is for his more intimate scenes that Arpino is most admired. His position as the favored painter in Rome would remain fairly secure even after the arrival of the Carracci and of Caravaggio, who for a short time was his pupil. Only with his humiliation by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who confiscated the artist's own collection, did his reputation appear to falter.

1. Private correspondence, April 2012.