A bearded man, bust-length, holding a rosary

This newly discovered study, superbly executed and in fine condition, shows why Gaetano Gandolfi was one of the most admired Italian artists of the eighteenth century. He was, in many respects, the last in a line of extraordinary painters from the Bolognese school that had such a profound effect on the course of European art from the sixteenth century onwards.

Highly cultured and erudite, Gandolfi excelled from an early age, enrolling at the Accademia Clementina at the age of seventeen. He drew on the works he saw on his travels, albeit relatively limited, in Italy, France and England, as well as the innumerable engravings that featured in many collections in Bologna. A trip to Venice in 1760 had a profound effect, with the influence of his Venetian contemporaries reflected almost immediately in his own work; his later pictures showcased vibrant brushwork in the same manner of Giambattista Tiepolo, Sebastiano Ricci and Giambattista Pittoni.

To an extent he measured himself against his older brother Ubaldo, and indeed this picture has been part of the same collection as the following lot; the two works may have been conceived together as pendants. A near identical composition, also by Gaetano, is in the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (D. Biagi Maino, Gaetano Gandolfi, Turin, 1995, p. 372, no. 107, fig. 121). The subject was engraved (fig. 1) and features in the Foglio contenente sette stampe which contains some of his most beautiful prints, indicating that this study, both engaging in character and exceptional in execution, met with particular success.

We are grateful to Donatella Biagi Maino for confirming the attribution and for her assistance in cataloguing this work.