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52 - Grotesque Portrait of a Young Man with Red Headgear Lombard …
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Estimate €1,000 - €2,000
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Description
Grotesque Portrait of a Young Man with Red Headgear Lombard school, early 18th century oil on canvas 43 x 32 cm The painting depicts a young man in a half-length, frontal pose against a dark neutral background, characterised by a highly charged and theatrical expression accentuated by an irregular smile that leaves the teeth exposed and by a fixed gaze directed directly at the observer. The figure wears a simple light-coloured shirt with vertical pleats and an eccentric red headdress crossed with feathered elements or decorative rods that give the image an ambiguous character, suspended between popular portrait, clownish figure and physiognomic study. The pictorial rendering, constructed using a rapid and synthetic material dominated by deep browns and sudden luminous accents on the face and hands, places the work in the climate of Lombard genre painting between the end of the 17th century and the first decades of the 18th century.The image appears to be linked to that naturalistic tradition born from the lesson of Annibale Carracci and the Bolognese Carraccesco milieu, in which the direct study of reality, popular expressions and eccentric physiognomies had given rise to a new interest in so-called 'heads of character'. This culture, which spread widely in northern Italy between the 17th and 18th century, found particular favour in the Lombardy area with artists oriented towards an intense and non-idealised representation of the humble classes and marginalised figures. In fact, the present painting seems to preserve that Carracci heritage in its strong attention to physiognomic truth, in the immediate frontality of the figure and in the psychological ambiguity of the expression, suspended between observation from nature and caricatural deformation. In this context, the work shows significant affinities with the painting of Antonio Cifrondi, especially in the expressive tension of the face, in the energetic brushstroke and in the taste for popular characters caught in almost theatrical attitudes. Similarly, the rough naturalism and the desire to accentuate the more irregular features of the figure recall the sensibility of Pietro Bellotti, the interpreter of a painting deeply interested in the world of beggars, pitocchi and half-figures of character. The uncovered and deliberately disturbing smile, rare in official portraiture of the time, finds precise comparisons in the tradition of grotesque heads and physiognomic studies derived from the Carracci milieu and subsequently reworked in Lombard genre painting. The eccentric headgear also contributes to reinforcing the theatrical and carnivalesque component of the image, suggesting the possible representation of a comic character, a jester or a deliberately charged figure destined for the collector's taste for the bizarre and grotesque. The work is thus an interesting testimony to the persistence of the naturalistic culture of Carracci in early 18th-century Lombard painting and its transformation into a more popular, expressive and picturesque sense in the tradition of the painters of pitocchi and character heads.
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About the sale Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings and Drawings
Auction location
Auction time 06/12/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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