Portrait of a child with a dog, oil on panel, 90 x 64 cm, framed

Provenance:
European private collection

The attribution of the present painting to Tiberio Titi has been confirmed by Professor Sandro Bellesi who dates it between the end of the 16th Century and the early 17th Century.

The present panel shows similarities to the work of Santi di Tito, the father and first master of Tiberio. Furthermore, the painting shows the influence of the late works of Alessandro Allori and his collaborators Giovanni Bizzelli and Giovan Maria Butteri which can seen, for example, in the gaze of the child. Influences of the late Mannerist painters active in the Studiolo of Francis I de’ Medici can also be identified in the nervous and disheveled way that the dog is depicted. The child portrayed in the present painting has not been identified, due to the lack of inscriptions and symbols. He is dressed in an untypical way for the period, in a Franciscan habit, which may indicate that he was supposed to enter the order or that his first name may have been Francis.

Tiberio Titi specialized in portraiture and his work was sought after by the Medici court in Florence, as for example the portraits of Francesco, Carlo and Eleonora de’ Medici (Florence, Pitti Palace). His paintings are characterized by elegant and sober compositions sometimes with a high degree of elaborate decoration.