(Rome 1633–1689)
Portrait of Pope Clement X Altieri,
oil on canvas, 66 x 53 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, Milan, 1 June 2004, lot 109 (as Roman School, 17th Century);
Private collection, Rome

Literature:
F. Petrucci, Pittura di Ritratto a Roma. Il Seicento, Rome 2008, vol. I, pp. 48-51, fig. 70, vol. II, p. 315, vol. III, p. 563, fig. 208 (as Ciro Ferri?)

We are grateful to Francesco Petrucci for suggesting the attribution.

Ciro Ferri had significant contacts with Pope Clement X Altieri (1670-1676). In 1670 he painted the Apparition of Christ to San Gaetano of Thiene, which is signed and dated (Palazzo Altieri, ABI, Rome) as the pendant to Carlo Maratti’s San Filippo Benizi and the Blasphemers (see: M. G. Bernardini, Un’opera di Ciro Ferri per Papa Clemente X Altieri, in Studi di Storia dell’arte in onore di Sir Denis Mahon, ed. by M. G. Bernardini/S. Danesi Squarzina/C. Strinati, Milan 2000, pp. 313-321).

In 1673 Ciro’s name is again linked to that of the Altieri, when the French engraver Benoit Farjat (1646-1724) used Ciro Ferri’s drawing to engrave the frontispiece Theseus with Hercules presenting the portrait of Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri (1623-1698), the uncle of Gaspare Albertoni, who was the adoptive son of Clement X.

Ferri’s portrait production is only partially known, and the present portrait of the pope, executed with a free brushwork together with a strong sense of psychological introspection, reveal the artist’s abilities in this discipline. Ciro Ferri was a versatile artist and a talented draughtsman and he demonstrated these qualities in his Self-portrait in the Uffizi (1665-66, inv. no. 1890/1696) as well as in the Portrait of Camilla Orsini Borghese in the Galleria Pallavicini.

The present portrait can be compared with the Portrait of Clement X attributed to Giovan Battista Gaulli, called Il Baciccio (Firenze, Galleria degli Uffizi inv. 1890/2635). An autograph replica of this work also belonged to Cardinal Camillo Massimo in Rome. Ciro Ferri was closely associated with the Medici court, and he almost certainly knew of the Massimo collection in Rome, so he could have known both these works in the original.

Ciro Ferri was the apprentice of Pietro da Cortona, and he inherited his studio after 1669, rapidly rising to become one of the most sought after artists of the late 17th century. As a master draughtsman, he gave ample demonstration of his versatility in the decorative arts, in sculpture (as director of the Accademia Medicea at Rome) and in ephemeral works, as well as in easel and fresco painting.

The present painting will be included in Maria Cristina Paoluzzi’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist as a fully autograph work. She dates the painting to between 1672 and 1674.