(Canale di Serino 1657–1747 Barra)
Portrait of a gentleman, three-quarter-length,
oil on canvas, 100.5 x 75.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Couturier & de Nicolay, Paris, 15th December 1992, lot 44 (as ‘Attributed to Solimena’);
Private Collection, Belgium

This painting is considered by Riccardo Lattuada to be an autograph work of Francesco Solimena on the basis of high-resolution digital photographs.

Because of its outdoor setting with a nearby architectural element and the presence of buildings in the background, the composition of the present portrait is similar to that of the Count Alois Thomas Raimund von Harrach at Rohrau, Graf Harrach’sche Gemäldegalerie (see: M. Pisani in Capolavori in festa. Effimero barocco a Largo di Palazzo (1683-1759), exhibition catalogue, Naples, 1997, pp. 207-209, n. 2.4). The portrait of Count Harrach – with which the painting presently under discussion also shares qualities of introspection and attention to details of dress – is dated to the time when the subject was Viceroy of Naples (1728-33). As Massimo Pisani observes, emblems of the Count’s official position are indirectly represented by the presence of Castel Nuovo in the left background of the composition. The same might be suggested for the personage represented in the present portrait, if, as is plausible, the building in the right background of the composition bears the same implications.

On stylistic grounds, the present painting is also similar to the portraits of aristocratic sitters produced by Solimena during the 1720s and 30s. The diluted impasto and the subtlety of tonal shifts are particularly reminiscent of the Portrait of a Gentleman formerly in the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, and recently for sale on the London market (see: N. Spinosa, Pittura del Settecento a Napoli dal Barocco al Rococò, Naples, 1986, p. 115, n. 51; p. 209, fig. 57; Sotheby’s, London, 3rd July 2008, lot 46).