Giovanni Antonio Fasolo

(Mandello del Lario 1530–1572 Vicenza)
Portrait of a gentleman and a child with a dog,
oil on canvas, 125 x 97 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Genoa;
where acquired by the present owner

Inscribed on the reverse of the lining canvas: ANNO.ЛI.D.XIX. FEBRY./EIVS NATI. ET. FVIT/ RETRACTVS ANNO/ .M.D.L.XVII. DIE. X°. IANѶ (this appears to reproduce an original text that was covered when the canvas was relined).

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for suggesting the attribution and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The inscription on the back of the relined canvas allows us to understand that the man in the present painting was born in February 1519 and his portrait was executed on 10 January 1567, when he was 48 years old. The subject’s style of dress, as well as the type of chair he sits on, correspond to this period. What makes this a touching image is the sense of confident abandonment with which his child leans between her father’s knees, holding on to his fingers yet looking in another direction, while the large dog, shows a particular affection to the child. This mood signals one of the most striking changes in attitude, current throughout Europe during the mid sixteenth century, in the behavioural relations between fathers and their children. It signals a new domestic sentiment that now allowed fathers, even when they were important, or as is the case of our sitter, engaged in presenting the best image of themselves, to also show love for their children, and as in the case here, indicate involvement with his child.

Lucco has suggested an attribution to Giovanni Antonio Fasolo for the present painting who originated from Mandello del Lario, Como (see L. Puppi, (ed.), 1650. Giardino di Chà Gualdo, Florence 1972, p. 54 and Faccioli, Musaeum Lapidarium Vicentinum…, vol. I, Vicenza 1776, p. 144). The inscription on the back of the relined canvas places this painting in exactly the same period as two other portraits by Fasolo now conserved in the Museo Civico, Vicenza: the Portrait of Giuseppe Gualdo with his children Paolo and Emilio and of Paola Buonanome Gualdo with her daughters Paola and Virginia (inv. ns. A867 and A 868). Fasolo had close ties with the noble family, through Girolamo Gualdo Jr, the son of Emilio, and the nephew of Giuseppe represented in the canvas (op. cit. pp. 54-55). Indeed, the collimation between the respective ages of the sitters in the portraits (the children, Paolo aged 13 and Emilio about 11, and their father 45 years of age) and their documented dates of birth, allows the Vicenza canvases to be dated to the years 1566-67. The features of the child’s portrait in the present painting are almost identical to that of the young Emilio Gualdo in Vicenza, and if in that painting the father Giuseppe, an illustrious judge, appears more severe towards his children, even his features, with a fairly broad nose, are quite similar leaving little doubt that the author of the present painting is the same as that of the portraits in Vicenza. Other stylistically comparable pictures a beyond Fasolo’s profane works, include his two altarpieces also in the museum at Vicenza (inv. A55; A338).