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Lot Essay
The present picture is being sold by the heirs of the late Federico Gentili di Giuseppe (1868-1940), a Jewish businessman born in Italy who moved to Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1940, he assembled in his apartment on the avenue Foch an important collection of Old Masters - principally Italian - as well as drawings, books, manuscripts, sculptures, objets d'art and French furniture. Following his death in 1941, and his family having fled occupied France, a part of his collection was appropriated and sold in Paris. Due to the circumstances of this forced sale, several of these paintings have been returned to the family in the past two years, of which a group were sold, Christie's, New York, 27 January 2000, lot 80-85, including two paintings by Giambattista Tiepolo formerly in the Louvre, Paris, and the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
The present picture is comparable to a Portrait of a young artist, of the same dimensions, in a private collection, Bergamo. Because of the compositional similarities between the two pictures, Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in her 1975 monograph on the artist, loc. cit., catalogued the present painting, on the basis of a photograph, under 'opere attribuite'. However, the differences between the two pictures are noticeable, particularly in the foreground still lifes and the relative positions of the two busts.
The authors of the 1993 Lyon catalogue, loc. cit, restored the painting's autograph status ('la qualité de la facture semble permettre de conserver l'exécution à Ghislandi'), a view concurred with by Dr. Francesco Frangi, who has on the basis of photographs kindly confirmed (written communication, April 2001) the authenticity of the picture.
The present picture is comparable to a Portrait of a young artist, of the same dimensions, in a private collection, Bergamo. Because of the compositional similarities between the two pictures, Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in her 1975 monograph on the artist, loc. cit., catalogued the present painting, on the basis of a photograph, under 'opere attribuite'. However, the differences between the two pictures are noticeable, particularly in the foreground still lifes and the relative positions of the two busts.
The authors of the 1993 Lyon catalogue, loc. cit, restored the painting's autograph status ('la qualité de la facture semble permettre de conserver l'exécution à Ghislandi'), a view concurred with by Dr. Francesco Frangi, who has on the basis of photographs kindly confirmed (written communication, April 2001) the authenticity of the picture.