Isidoro Bianchi

Isidoro Bianchi di Campione seems to have been active at the start of the seventeenth century as a fresco painter in the Como area. His first recorded work is a fresco cycle for the Cistercian monastery attached to the Abbey of Santa Maria dell'Acquafredda, 1598–1601. Between 1605 and 1606 he is recorded as having visited the court of Rudolph II in Prague, after which he returned to Lombardy and studied under Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, called il Morazzone. It was through his connection to Morazzone that he entered the patronage of the ducal house of Savoy. He was first employed to finish the deceased Morazzone's fresco cycle in the grand salon of the Savoy palace at Rivoli before being appointed court painter and knighted by the Duke in 1631.

This painting formed part of one of the largest and most important private collections in Denmark. The Gavnø Estate was acquired in 1735 by Count Otto Thott, later Minister of Finance for Denmark, and his wife, Birgitte-Charlotte Kruse. They had the castle at Gavnø restored and rebuilt in 1755, partly to house the collection of paintings that Count Thott had been assembling since his youth. At his death in 1785 the collection was the largest in Denmark, numbering over 3,000 items, not all of them at Gavnø.

We are grateful to Prof. Marco Tanzi for endorsing the attribution to Isidoro Bianchi and dating the painting to the 1640–50s, following inspection of digital images.