Bartolomeo Passarotti (Bologna 1529-1592)
Portrait of a Collector, standing three-quarter-length, before a draped table with statues, medallions and books
oil on canvas
112 x 92cm (44 1/8 x 36 1/4in).
Footnotes:
Provenance
The Esterházy Collection, Hungary and Germany
Sale Sotheby's, London, 19 January 1966, lot 28 (as G. B. Moroni, bt. Hale, £700)
Sale Sotheby's, New York, 19 March 1981, lot 131 (as Manner of Giovanni Battista Moroni)
Private Collection, Milan 1990
With Robilant and Voena, Milan/London, 2015

Literature
D. Benati, 'Una Lucrezia e altre proposte per Bartolomeo Passerotti' in Paragone, 379, 1981, p. 31, pl. 42
F. Porzio, 'Tre ritratti di Bartolomeo Passerotti' in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Federico Zeri, Milan, 1984, vol. II, p. 430
C. Franzoni, 'Rimembranze d'infinite cose'. Le collezioni rinascimentali di antichità', in Memoria dell'antico nell'arte italiana, Milan, 1984, p. 302, note no. 104
A. Ghirardi, 'Bartolomeo Passerotti' in Pittura Bolognese del '500, Bologna, 1986, vol. II, p. 555
C, Höper, Bartolomeo Passarotti, Worms, 1987, vol. II, p. 237, cat. no. A 38 (as studio of Passarotti)
D. Benati, Antologia di Pittura Emiliana dal XVI al XVIII Secolo exh. cat., Milan, 1988, cat. no. 7
A. Ghirardi, Bartolomeo Passerotti Pittore. Catalogo Generale, Rimini, 1990, p. 170, no. 20
D. Benati, L'inquietudine del volto da Lotto a Freud, da Tiziano a De Chirico, exh. cat., Milan, 2005, cat. no. 5

Exhibited
Bologna, Palazzo Davia Bargellini, Antologia di Pittura Emiliana dal XVI al XVIII Secolo, 5 November- 27 November 1988, cat. no. 7
Lodi, Bipielle Center, L'inquietudine del volto da Lotto a Freud, da Tiziano a De Chirico, 11 November 2005 - 12 March 2006, cat. no. 5


Traditionally thought to be by Giovanni Battista Moroni whilst in the Esterhazy collection, the present work was only identified as by the Bolognese painter and portraitist Bartolomeo Passarotti by Daniele Benati in his article of 1981 (see Literature). In the present Portrait of a Collector, the artist has paid particularly close attention to the detail of the face with the sitter's facial features and beard meticulously depicted, but with the objects of the background being more loosely and freely rendered.

Various scholars have dated the present Portrait of a Collector to the early 1570s and it has often been compared to the portrait of a very similar sitter, now at the Italian embassy, London (see: A. Ghirardi, Bartolomeo Passerotti, Rimini, 1990, p. 257, cat. no. 82, ill. pl. 82) in which the subject also stands beside a table laden with items he wishes to be accompanied by including a classical marble torso, a Parian marble bust of Athena in profile and a sculpted head of an elderly man with a pensive expression on his face. There is also a small pile of books and a sheet of paper with three further medallions on it. In the figure's right hand, he holds a medallion of a Roman emperor in profile, as in the portrait in the Italian embassy, and in his other he holds a folded piece of paper on which the sitter's identity may have been written.

As is typical for Passarotti, he has made full use of the narrative and expressive potential of the figure's hands in the present work. Numerous pen and ink studies of hands are known by Passarotti, such as his Four men's hands in natural size now in the Albertina, Vienna (see fig. 1), and the figure's hands played an essential part in animating the artist's portraits. In the present work, Passarotti has drawn particular attention to the medallion in the sitter's hand. Given the presence of the papers on the draped table, along with three further medallions on it, perhaps the artist has portrayed his sitter in the act of cataloguing these pieces. Biographer of the Bolognese school of painters, Count Carlo Cesare Malvasia, described Passarotti's particular type of rhetorical portrait as 'non figurandoli fermi e insensati, ma in azione e in moto, e perció coll'operazione animandoli' ('[He does] not depict his sitters still and inanimate but in action and in motion, thus bringing them to life', see 1678 edition, G. P. Zanotti, Felsina Pittrice vite De 'Pittori Bolognesi, Bologna, 1841 , vol. I, p. 191).
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