(Parma 1582-1647 Rome)
Portrait of the artist’s family,
oil on canvas, 118 x 96.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Barcelona

Literature:
E. Borsellino, La collezione d’arte del cardinale Decio Azzolino, Rome 2001, p. 56, fig. 15 (as a copy, possibly workshop, photograph before restoration);
E. Schleier, Giovanni Lanfranco. Un pittore barocco tra Parma, Roma e Napoli, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2001, mentioned under no. 70, pp. 250-253, fig.1 (as Giovanni Lanfranco, photograph before restoration);

We are grateful to Erich Schleier for reconfirming the attribution to Giovanni Lanfranco on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph. He examined the painting in the original in the early 1990s.

The present painting relates to another larger work by Giovanni Lanfranco, in the collection of the Banca Popolare di Novara, which represents the artist’s family: his five children, his wife Cassandra and his mother Cornelia. The present painting shows the left side of this composition and includes Lanfranco’s elderly mother who wears widow’s weeds, and his daughters Angela, Flavia the first born, Margherita and Giuseppe the painter’s only son, seen here holding a cup. The latter child, seen on the right of the painting, only reappeared after recent cleaning, while he was not yet visible in the photograph published by Erich Schleier (see literature). The present painting has an atmosphere of great intimacy and reveals certain differences when compared to the larger composition, such as the bejewelled ribbon holding Flavia’s hair and the pearl necklace worn by Margherita.

The painting currently in Novara was likely made by Lanfranco towards the end of 1626 when he was almost at the apogee of his Roman career and was engaged in the execution of the frescoes for Sant’Andrea della Valle. Indeed, two years later he was to receive the prestigious title of Knight of Christ from Pope Urban VIII. The larger painting was given by Lanfranco as a gift to his friend Don Ferrante Carli, the secretary of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who in 1630 sold it to the art dealer Fabrizio Valguamera. Subsequently, the painting is documented half a century later in the Palazzo Riario, in the collection of Queen Cristina of Sweden: here it was in fact on loan to the Queen from Decio Azzolino, her councillor and sole heir, who owned many works by Lanfranco.