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拍品專文
Hitherto unpublished, this portrait emerges as an exciting new addition to Fra' Galgario’s body of work. Dated to circa 1710 by Prof. Francesco Frangi, to whom we are grateful (private correspondence, 2025), the painting exhibits distinctive qualities of the artist's oeuvre in the dark background, direct gaze, and almost eccentric dress of the sitter.
After a few years as an apprentice in the workshop of several painters in Bergamo, his birthplace, Giuseppe Ghislandi moved to Venice in 1675, where he took vows and became a friar in the Convent of San Francesco di Paola, under the Order of the Minims. While on the island, he studied with great dedication the work of the principal sixteenth-century Venetian masters, like Titian and Veronese. Immersed in the artistic vitality of the Serenissima, Ghislandi, then known as Fra’ Vittore (Fra’ for ‘frate’, meaning friar), met and collaborated with both Italian and foreign painters active in the city, such as the Czech painter Jan Kupetzky, whose portraits share the same the tenebrous backgrounds and psychological intensity.
Ghislandi returned to his native Bergamo in 1701 and started residing in the Convent of Galgario shortly after - hence his later nickname, Fra' Galgario. The 1710s were prosperous years for the artist, as he started receiving numerous commissions from prominent Bergamasque aristocratic families; it was at the start of this period of increasing popularity that the present painting was executed.
Possibly a member of the local nobility or bourgeoisie, this unidentified man gazes at the viewer from a slightly higher viewpoint, against a dark background that emphasises the vivid hue of his deep blue cloak. His penetrating and proud eyes stare down in an almost arrogant attitude framed by a theatrical cap and white lace collar, with which Fra’ Galgario often ornamented his sitters. The painter’s relatively extensive production has left us with numerous anonymous portraits, that often exhibited the same emotional vigour as the present work, leaving the viewer to contemplate on the thoughts, feelings and lives of the sitters.
The most compelling comparison of this unidentified group is the Portrait of a young artist (Private collection, Bergamo; M.C. Gozzoli, Vittore Ghislandi detto Fra’ Galgario, Bergamo, p. 146, no. 6), with whom the man in the present portrait bears an uncanny resemblance. Whether the sitter was a painter, merchant, or nobleman, he appears proud and eccentrically dressed - qualities that the artist evidently enjoyed painting, which were so in contrast with the simplicity of life as a mendicant friar in the Convent of Galgario, where he would pass away in 1745 aged 88.
After a few years as an apprentice in the workshop of several painters in Bergamo, his birthplace, Giuseppe Ghislandi moved to Venice in 1675, where he took vows and became a friar in the Convent of San Francesco di Paola, under the Order of the Minims. While on the island, he studied with great dedication the work of the principal sixteenth-century Venetian masters, like Titian and Veronese. Immersed in the artistic vitality of the Serenissima, Ghislandi, then known as Fra’ Vittore (Fra’ for ‘frate’, meaning friar), met and collaborated with both Italian and foreign painters active in the city, such as the Czech painter Jan Kupetzky, whose portraits share the same the tenebrous backgrounds and psychological intensity.
Ghislandi returned to his native Bergamo in 1701 and started residing in the Convent of Galgario shortly after - hence his later nickname, Fra' Galgario. The 1710s were prosperous years for the artist, as he started receiving numerous commissions from prominent Bergamasque aristocratic families; it was at the start of this period of increasing popularity that the present painting was executed.
Possibly a member of the local nobility or bourgeoisie, this unidentified man gazes at the viewer from a slightly higher viewpoint, against a dark background that emphasises the vivid hue of his deep blue cloak. His penetrating and proud eyes stare down in an almost arrogant attitude framed by a theatrical cap and white lace collar, with which Fra’ Galgario often ornamented his sitters. The painter’s relatively extensive production has left us with numerous anonymous portraits, that often exhibited the same emotional vigour as the present work, leaving the viewer to contemplate on the thoughts, feelings and lives of the sitters.
The most compelling comparison of this unidentified group is the Portrait of a young artist (Private collection, Bergamo; M.C. Gozzoli, Vittore Ghislandi detto Fra’ Galgario, Bergamo, p. 146, no. 6), with whom the man in the present portrait bears an uncanny resemblance. Whether the sitter was a painter, merchant, or nobleman, he appears proud and eccentrically dressed - qualities that the artist evidently enjoyed painting, which were so in contrast with the simplicity of life as a mendicant friar in the Convent of Galgario, where he would pass away in 1745 aged 88.