Milanese School, late 15th century - Portrait of a Gentleman in a Red Coat Holding a Lute and a Letter

Milanese School, late 15th century

Portrait of a Gentleman in a Red Coat Holding a Lute and a Letter

Oil on panel (parquetted). 71.8 x 52.7 cm.
Signed and dated lower right: Bernardinus de...ivi pinxit 1497.

When this portrait of a gentleman was first discovered in a private Italian collection in the late 19th century, it attracted the attention of the leading connoisseurs of Italian Renaissance painting. Giovanni Morelli, Adolfo Venturi, Bernard Berenson, Wilhelm Suida and other researchers all attempted to attribute it to an artist. It is thought to originate from the Milanese school and due to the inscription "BERNARDINUS DE**IVI PINXIT 1497", Bernardino de´ Conti was considered the most probable candidate for authorship after Ambrogio de Predis. Today, the work is ascribed to an anonymous artist from the Milan school active in the late 15th century; an artist who was as familiar with the tendencies of Florentine portrait painting as he was with the developments in Milan itself, which were shaped above all by Leonardo and his circle.
The work depicts a young man with long, slightly wavy hair. He wears a red cap and a matching red jacket, the sleeves of his jacket are rolled up to reveal a luxurious fur trimming. His face is depicted in a three-quarter profile, his gaze is directed to the right. He holds a lute and carries an unfurled sheet of paper in his right hand. The pictorial space is defined by the window at the right edge of the picture.

The lute in the hand of the sitter and the inscription "SI COM EI VITIO SOL VITA DESPERA” both refer to love as the theme of this portrait. However, the work still poses a number of unanswered questions: What is the piece of paper in the young man's hand? Are they the notes of a piece of music he composed for his lover? Or is it a letter to or from his lover? Questions also arise about the context of the portrait: Is it an independent portrait? Could a wealthy young man simply have commissioned a portrait of himself as a cultivated composer of love songs? Or was there a counterpart representing a woman, which would make the piece a marriage portrait, for which there are contemporaneous Florentine examples.

There is in fact a famous Milanese reference for this portrait: The "Portrait of a Young Man (Portrait of a Musician)" from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (inv. no. 99), which is ascribed to either Leonardo da Vinci himself or to his School. In this portrait, painted a decade before the present work, a number of artistic parallels can be found: The three-quarter view of the face, the way the sitter faces towards the right, the half-length format, and the piece of paper in the hand - on which notes of an unidentified piece of music can be seen.

Provenance

C. Benigno Crespi, Milan. - Achillito Chiesa, Milan.- D'Abri, Paris. - Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam 1928. - Confiscated by the Nazis in 1940. – Restitution to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikkers in 2006. – Auctioned by Christie´s, New York, 19.4.2007, lot 6. - Continental private collection.

Literature

Giovanni Morelli: Della pittura Italiana: Studi Storico-Critici, Le Gallerie Borghese e Doria Pamphili in Roma, Rome 1897, p. 194. - Adolfo Venturi: La Galleria Crespi in Milano, Milan 1900, p. 255-257. - Bernard Berenson, North Italian painters of the Renaissance, London & New York 1907, p.198. - Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Ulrich Thieme & Felix Becker, Leipzig 1907-50, vol. XII, p. 332. - Wilhelm Suida: 'Leonardo da Vinci und seine Schule in Mailand', in: Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft, XII (1919), p. 276. - Raimond van Marle: La pittura all'esposizione d'arte antica italiana di Amsterdam, in: Bolletino d'Arte, XXVIII (1934/5), p. 455. - C. Wright: Paintings in Dutch Museums, Amsterdam 1980, p. 538. - A.T. Fiorio: 'Per il ritratto lombardo: Bernardino de' Conti', in: Arte Lombarda, LXVIII/9, (1984), p. 39, 49, Fußnote 9.- K. Dirkx: 'Bernardinus de ...ivi ...pinxit', Bonnefans, Bulletin van de Vereniging van Vrienden van het Bonnefantenmuseum, V, no. 1-2, (1989), p. 14-5, illus. - W. Angelelli et al.: Pittura dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento nelle fotografie di Girolamo Bombelli, Milan 1991, p. 133, illus. - Old Master Paintings: An illustrated summary catalogue, Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (The Netherlandish Office for the Fine Arts), The Hague 1992, p. 336, no. 2975, illus. - C.E. De Jong-Janssen, in D.H. van Wegen (ed.): Catalogue of the Italian paintings in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht 1995, p. 140-1, illus. 69, pl. 32; p. 173 and p. 183, pl. 82.

Exhibitions

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Italiaansche kunst in Nederlands bezit, 1934, no. 83, illus.- Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, on loan until 2006.