Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a black coat and black cap

Details

Alvise Vivarini (Venice or Murano 1442/53-1503/5)
Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a black coat and black cap
oil on marouflaged panel
11 1/8 x 8½ in. (28.2 x 21.6 cm.)

Provenance

Gagliardi family, Florence; sale, Jandolo & Tavazi, Rome, 27 April et seq. 1908, lot 525, pl. XXXIII.
Private collection, Avignon.
with Julius Böhler, Munich, by 1929. Edward Hutton (1875-1959), London, by 1947.

Literature

The Art News, XXIX, no. 38, 11 July 1931, reproduced p. 18.
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School, London, 1957, I, pp. 196 and 201, as both Alvise and Bartolomeo Vivarini.
F. Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini, e i belliniani, Venice, 1962, I, p. 274, no. V 390, II, pl. 675, fig. 778.
J. Steer, Alvise Vivarini, His Art and Influence, Cambridge, 1982, pp. 59, 144, no. 20, 147, under no. 22, pls. 34 and 34a.

Exhibited

Munich, Julius Böhler Gallery, Ausstellung altvenezianischer Malerei, 1931, no. 59.

Special notice

This lot has no reserve VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

Steer (op. cit., p. 144) observes that 'despite its condition and the radical change of appearance it underwent between 1944 and 1957, there is still a reason to believe that this is the remains of a genuine Alvise portrait of the late eighties or early nineties'. Steer cites comparisons with the Saint Sebastian of the Belluno altarpiece and Alvise's portrait in the National Gallery, London.

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