ALESSANDRO MAGNASCO, DIT IL LISSANDRINO Gênes, 1667 – 1749

Portrait of a clergyman Canvas Inscribed along the lower edge: STA.STILVM.AVOTI. BLASI.V.P. 65.5 x 51 cm - 25 13/16 x 20 1/16 in. Portrait of a clergyman, oil on canvas PROVENANCE Christie's sale (London), July 4, 1997, lot 336 (as attributed to Alessandro Magnasco); Swiss private collection. We would like to thank Professor Fausta Franchini Guelfi, a specialist on the artist, for confirming the authenticity of the work in February 2024 after a visual examination, and for providing the information required to write this notice. She will shortly be including the painting in a publication. Born in Genoa, the artist nicknamed Lissandrino moved away from his native city at an early age, settling in Milan in the 1680s. He frequented the school of Filippo Abbiati (1640 - 1715) and quickly developed a tendency towards livid tones and strong contrasts of light and shadow, inspired by his master and the study of painters such as Giovanni Battista Crespi (1573 - 1632), Mazzucchelli (1573 - 1626) and Francesco Cairo (1607 - 1665). In Milan, he was appreciated by the local aristocracy, and soon joined the circle of artists protected by Grand Prince Ferdinand III de' Medici (1663 - 1713) and the collectors in his entourage, before leaving for Florence in 1703. There, he defined his style by studying the engravings of Jacques Callot (1592 - 1635) as well as the works of Salvator Rosa (1615 - 1673) and Livio Mehus (1627 - 1691). In 1709, he returned to Milan, where he remained until 1735, before returning to Genoa for good. By leaving Genoa at an extremely young age, Magnasco had escaped the influence of Van Dyck (1599 - 1641) and Rubens (1577 - 1640), an influence exerted by the De Wael brothers (1591 - 1661; 1592 - 1667), Jan Roos (1591 - 1638) and Vincenzo Malo (c. 1602 - 1644), enriched a little later by Rigaldian portraiture. Milan, on the other hand, enabled him to develop in his portraits a clear concern for the uncompromising rendering of his models, driven by a severe realism in which he rejects any incensing of nature, lavishly staged against a backdrop of heavy drapery and monumental columns. Here, against a dark background, the figure of a middle-aged man stands out, positioned at mid-body, slightly three-quarter-length and wearing a black biretta, suggesting that he is an ecclesiastic. His medium-length hair falls on either side of his face, which emerges from a dark garment from which the collar of his shirt protrudes. The light hits his right side, accentuating his expressive lines and wrinkles, sparing none of his few other physical imperfections like a small wart under his right eye. Fausta Franchini Guelfi, a specialist on the artist to whom the work was submitted, believes that this is a youthful portrait - probably one of the earliest - that Magnasco executed between 1687 and 1690. He was in Milan at the time, and it was here that he really developed his activity as a portraitist, working in the service of a wealthy, enlightened aristocracy. Ruthless with his model, nothing enriches the extreme simplicity of the presentation against this unadorned background. The severity of the whole, the play of chiaroscuro, the broad brushstrokes intensify the presence of the model, whose strict character seems to emerge. Carlo Giuseppe Ratti writes of the painter: "He succeeded above all in making portraits, many of them marvelously captured from life "1 . That's what we're talking about here, a man's face frozen in its truest, simplest form, perfectly devoid of artifice. Franchini Guelfi emphasizes the painter's characteristic handwriting in the facial features, the restless contours of the white collar, which can be found in a portrait painted in the same years, preserved in Genoa's Palazzo Bianco 2 . The long brushstrokes of the barrette can also be found in another portrait of a writer 2 where, at the commissioner's request, the painter had to add a bookcase as a background. Not only an early work, Magnasco's portrait of an ecclesiastic should be seen as one of the last examples of the genre before he devoted himself to lively compositions of small figures, a style that was to be his greatest success. At the end of the seventeenth century, this choice of portraiture favors the model at his most obvious, most realistic, anticipating in a sense what Giacomo Ceruti (1698 - 1767) would do with his own models. 1 Carlo Giuseppe RATTI, Delle vite de' pittori, scultori, ed architetti genovesi, Genoa 1769, t. II, p.156. 2 See Fausta Franchini Guelfi, Aless