Italian school; XVIII century. "Archdeacon Luca del Gio Pompeo del Gio Pompeo di Luca Tommasi". Oil on canvas. Relined. Presents inscription and wax seal on the back. Measurements: 92 x 73 cm. Outstanding masculine portrait, of three quarters on neutral bottom, that represents a man of advanced age and aristocratic bearing. Dressed with a coat indicates his profession as archdeacon. Resolved in realistic language, the painter delves into the psychology of the character. His angular features underline the severity of his character. The starched collar enhances the haughtiness of his features, modeled with a clear light that also brings out the right textures of the coat. In the 18th century, the panorama of European portraiture was varied and broad, with numerous influences and largely determined by the taste of both the clientele and the painter himself. However, in this century a new concept of portraiture was born, which would evolve throughout the century and unify all the national schools: the desire to capture the personality of the human being and his character, beyond his external reality and his social rank, in his effigy. During the previous century, portraiture had become consolidated among the upper classes, and was no longer reserved only for the court. For this reason the formulas of the genre, as the eighteenth century progressed and even more so in the seventeenth century, would relax and move away from the ostentatious and symbolic official representations typical of the Baroque apparatus. On the other hand, the eighteenth century will react against the rigid etiquette of the previous century with a more human and individual conception of life, and this will be reflected in all areas, from the furniture that becomes smaller and more comfortable, replacing the large gilded and carved furniture, to the portrait itself, which will come to dispense, as we see here, of any symbolic or scenographic element to capture the individual instead of the character. Inscription and wax seal on the back.