Lot 185: *ALESSANDRO GHERARDINI (1655-1726)

oil on canvas Gherardini's idiosyncratic style combines the Florentine coloring and figural types of his teacher Cesare Dandini with the classicism of Pietro da Cortona. As a young man, Gherardini travelled extensively throughout Northern Italy but by the end of the 1680s he was back in Florence, working for the Medici (for whom he decorated a chapel in the Palazzo Pitti). The almost mannerist proportions of the figure of Saint Catherine and the coloring in the present picture show a Parmese influence and it is therefore plausible that this painting is a youthful work, datable to the late 1670s or early 1680s.

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, October 10, 1991, lot 161 (as Attributed to Alessandro Gherardini) where purchased by the present collector