(Rome 1578–1630)
Portrait of Donna Flavia Fani Theodoli (1575–1664),
oil on canvas, 66 x 49 cm, framed

Provenance:
Château de Poitou, France;
sale, Galerie Rouillac, Paris, 6 June 2004, lot 30 (as Attributed to Ottavio Leoni);
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
F. Petrucci, Pittura di ritratto a Roma. Il 600, III, Rome 2008, pag. 565 fig. 214 (as Ambito Cortonesco, Ciro Ferri?);
Y. Primarosa, Ottavio Leoni (1578–1630). Eccellente miniator di ritratti, Rome 2017, p. 735 cat. no. 80, illustrated p. 736 (as Ottavio Leoni)

The sitter in the present painting is Donna Flavia Fani Theodoli, the wife of the Marchese of San Vito, Theodolo Theodoli I from Rome. She is represented with a composed, severe and distant expression, but she is also depicted with realism. She wears dark clothes lightened by a thin veil. Widowed in 1615, Donna Flavia Fani Theodoli became responsible for her family’s finances and maintaining her noble family’s position at the Papal court.

The identification of the sitter as Donna Flavia Fani Theodoli can be confirmed by comparison with another portrait belonging to the Theodoli family (see F. Solinas, Politica familiare e storia artistica nella Roma del primo Seicento. Il caso dei Marchesi Theodoli, in: Storia dell’arte, no. 116/117, 2007, p. 189 fig. 35). The two paintings might be identified as the ‘dui [ritratti] dell’Ill.ma Signora Nonna, uno [con] cornice negra et l’altro senza’ [‘two [portraits] of the ll.ma Signora Nonna, one [with] a black frame and the other without’] mentioned in the 1662 list of the furnishings of the Palazzo Theodoli at San Vito Romano (see op. cit. Solinas, 2007, p. 153).

Ottavio Leoni was one of the leading portraitists in Rome during the third quarter of the seventeenth century. Following on from the example set by Pietro da Cortona and Gian Lorenzo Bernini he was fully aware of the latest developments in baroque portraiture. Indeed, he focused on the representation of the introspection of his sitters, as can be seen in his Portrait of Tommaso Salini in the all’Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (inv. no. 525) or in his Portrait of Marcantonio Borghese conserved in the Museo Stibbert, Florence (inv. no. 12029) as well as in his Portrait of Licinia Leni. This sense of character is also present in the present painting and owing to the fluidity and freedom of handling and the fine layering of veils of colour, this work can be considered a mature work by the artist, executed between 1625 and 1630.