Lot 95: Vittore Ghislandi, called Fra Galgario (Bergamo 1655-1743)

Portrait of a young sculptor, three-quarter-length, holding a bust oil on canvas 371/2 x 30 in. (95 x 76 cm.) PROVENANCE Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, 22 avenue Foch, Paris; (+) sale, H“tel Drouot, 13-14 May 1941, lot 42 (9,100 francs). with Fran‡ois Heim, Paris, from whom purchased by the Mus‚e des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 1958: Restituted to the heirs of Federico Gentili di Giuseppe by the Mus‚e des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 2001. LITERATURE R. Jullian, 'Mus‚e des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Dix ann‚es d'acquisitions, 1948-1958', La Revue des Arts, VIII, September-October 1958, pp. 292 and 294, fig. 4, as Ghislandi. 'La Chronique des Arts', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 102, LV, January 1960, pp. 5 and 51, fig. 14, as Ghislandi. F.M. Ferro, 'Fra Galgario oltre monti', Arte Illustrata, 1.N.1, January 1968, p. 16, fig. 13, as Ghislandi. M.-C. Gozzoli, Vittore Ghislandi detto Fra' Galgario, Bergamo, 1975, p. 133, no. 222, illustrated p. 192, fig. 1, as 'attributed to Ghislandi'. V. Lavergne-Durey and H. Buijs, Catalogue sommaire illustr‚ des peintures du Mus‚e des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Ecoles ‚trangŠres XIII-XIXŠme siŠcles, Paris, 1993, p. 273, as 'attributed to Ghislandi...La qualit‚ de la facture semble permettre de conserver l'ex‚cution … Ghislandi'. S. Bloch, 'Jeune sculpteur, terrible histoire', Figaro, 21 October 2000, p. 5, illustrated. NOTES The present picture is being sold by the heirs of the late Federico Gentili di Giuseppe (1868-1940), a Jewish businessman born in Italy who moved to Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1940, he assembled in his apartment on the avenue Foch an important collection of Old Masters - principally Italian - as well as drawings, books, manuscripts, sculptures, objets d'art and French furniture. Following his death in 1941, and his family having fled occupied France, a part of his collection was appropriated and sold in Paris. Due to the circumstances of this forced sale, several of these paintings have been returned to the family in the past two years, of which a group were sold, Christie's, New York, 27 January 2000, lot 80-85, including two paintings by Giambattista Tiepolo formerly in the Louvre, Paris, and the Gem„ldegalerie, Berlin. The present picture is comparable to a Portrait of a young artist, of the same dimensions, in a private collection, Bergamo. Because of the compositional similarities between the two pictures, Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in her 1975 monograph on the artist, loc. cit., catalogued the present painting, on the basis of a photograph, under 'opere attribuite'. However, the differences between the two pictures are noticeable, particularly in the foreground still lifes and the relative positions of the two busts. The authors of the 1993 Lyon catalogue, loc. cit, restored the painting's autograph status ('la qualit‚ de la facture semble permettre de conserver l'ex‚cution … Ghislandi'), a view concurred with by Dr. Francesco Frangi, who has on the basis of photographs kindly confirmed (written communication, April 2001) the authenticity of the picture.