Vittore Ghislandi, called Fra Galgario

Private collection, Italy.

The canvas has a recent relining and the paint surface is dirty. The wine coloured hat and cloak seem to have developed a heavy cracking pattern in the shadows. The rest of the paint surface appears to be thickly painted and well preserved, with the exception of three stopped out 2x3 cm (or smaller) damages in the upper centre.
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Datable to circa 1730, the painting is an autograph variant of Fra Galgario's prototype in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (canvas, 71 by 56 cm).¹ A smaller version in which the sitter appears closer to the pictorial plane is in a private collection, Milan.² The latter version is listed as being inscribed on the reverse of the canvas: 'Ritratto del Cerighetto di mano del frate'.³ This most likely identifies the sitter as one of the altarboys associated with the convent in which the artist lived; in the local Bergamese dialect a chiericetto means altarboy. The same sitter was painted by the artist when he was younger, so it is very possible that he was closely associated with the artist and his monastic community.⁴

The attribution has been independently endorsed by both Dott. Giovanni Malagussa and Prof. Francesco Frangi, copies of whose expertises are available to the buyer.

1. See M. C. Gozzoli, Vittore Ghislandi detto Frà Galgario, Bergamo 1981, p. 103, cat. no. 17, reproduced p. 176, fig. 7.
2. Ibid., p. 123, cat. no. 144, reproduced p. 176, fig. 3.
3. 'Portrait of [a] Cerighetto by the hand of the friar'.
4. The earlier portrait is also in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo; see Gozzoli, op. cit., p. 101, cat. no. 11, reproduced p. 170, fig. 1.