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Lot Essay
The Raggi had long been a prominent family of distinguished bankers and merchants in Genoa, deriving much of their wealth from the commerce generated by the city’s port. As members of the city’s nobility in the seventeenth century, the family sought to repeatedly reinforce the prominence of their lineage, enhancing their power in Genoa as well as serving to facilitate closer contacts with foreign aristocrats. A major component of this self-promotional ideology was the commission in the mid-1620s of a series of portraits emphasising the family’s notable ancestors. This project was probably an initiative of the Marchese Tomasso Raggi (c. 1597-1679) or of his brother Ottaviano. Van Dyck had been working in Italy since 1621, spending much of his time in Genoa, and was one of the painters chosen to assist in the creation of the Raggis’ ancestral gallery. As such, he produced a portrait of the early sixteenth-century Prefect Raffaele Raggi (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1942.9.90) and a portrait of Tommaso Raggi himself (Private collection; see S.J. Barnes, Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 198, no. II.56). As many as ten paintings are believed to have been made for the series, with others painted by Giovanni Bernardo Carbone (1614-1683) and Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644).
This portrait was almost likewise certainly painted for the Raggi gallery and shows Paolo Gregorio Raggi, who had acted as Governor of Corsica in 1547. The painting is almost identical in scale with the Washington picture and bears a very similar inscription. Like the portrait of Raffaele Raggi, the sitter is also dressed in historicising armour, and was probably based on a living model rather than pre-existing portrait types.
The provenance of the present work seems to have been confused in scholarship with that of the Portrait of Raffaele Raggi. In the 2005 Washington catalogue of Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth-Century, van Dyck’s portrait is described as having been in the Farquhar collection and sold as lot 124 in the 1894 sale (see provenance). Described as ‘A General in Armour, with arms’, however, the identification of the picture is not clear. More definite is that when the present picture of Paolo Gregorio Raggi was sold again at Christie’s in 1949, its provenance was listed as being ‘From the Collection of Sir Walter Rockcliffe Farquhar, Bart.’ suggesting that it, rather than the Washington portrait, was that sold in 1894.
This portrait was almost likewise certainly painted for the Raggi gallery and shows Paolo Gregorio Raggi, who had acted as Governor of Corsica in 1547. The painting is almost identical in scale with the Washington picture and bears a very similar inscription. Like the portrait of Raffaele Raggi, the sitter is also dressed in historicising armour, and was probably based on a living model rather than pre-existing portrait types.
The provenance of the present work seems to have been confused in scholarship with that of the Portrait of Raffaele Raggi. In the 2005 Washington catalogue of Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth-Century, van Dyck’s portrait is described as having been in the Farquhar collection and sold as lot 124 in the 1894 sale (see provenance). Described as ‘A General in Armour, with arms’, however, the identification of the picture is not clear. More definite is that when the present picture of Paolo Gregorio Raggi was sold again at Christie’s in 1949, its provenance was listed as being ‘From the Collection of Sir Walter Rockcliffe Farquhar, Bart.’ suggesting that it, rather than the Washington portrait, was that sold in 1894.