Vittore Giuseppe Ghislandi, called Fra' Galgario

Private collection, Germany, since the late 1950s;

Anonymous sale ('Property from a European Private Collection'), London, Sotheby’s, 9 July 2014, lot 36;

Acquired subsequently by the present owner.

Executed with supreme virtuosity and confidence, this flamboyant depiction of an elegantly dressed young boy, is a mature work by Fra' Galgario, arguably the most idiosyncratic portrait-painter in northern Italy in the first half of the 18^th century. Dating to the 1730s, it was probably painted as a pendant to a portrait of a slightly older boy, presumably the sitter's brother, sold at Sotheby's, London, on 7 July 2011, lot 67, for £325,250, the record price for the artist at auction.¹ Both works are painted on oval canvases, a format favoured by Fra' Galgario, which he adopted for the majority of his formal portraits.

Fra' Galgario, born Vittore Ghislandi in Bergamo in 1655 into a family of painters, trained initially in his native city in the studios of Giacomo Cotta (1627–1689) and Bartolomeo Bianchini (1634–1710). His formative years, however, were shaped above all by his sojourn in Venice during the 1690s, where he entered the studio of Sebastiano Bombelli (1635–1719). There he absorbed the luminous palette and fluid brushwork of the Venetian school, which he later fused with the more restrained and formal Bergamasque portrait tradition, developing a style that became entirely his own. In 1702, at the age of forty-seven, he entered the Order of the Minims in the monastery of Galgario in Bergamo, adopting the name of its patron saint. His refined, penetrating portraits, notable for their psychological depth and painterly freedom, won him a distinguished clientele both in Italy and beyond, counting among his patrons Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736) and the celebrated art collector Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661–1774). Fra' Galgario remained active until his death in 1743, leaving behind a body of work that stands as one of the high points of 18^th-century Lombard portraiture.

We are grateful to Francesco Frangi for endorsing the attribution to Fra' Galgario on the basis of digital images.

¹ Oil on canvas, oval, 98.4 x 82.1 cm.; https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/old-master-british-paintings-evening-l11033/lot.67.html