(Verona 1518–1560)
Portrait of an artist, possibly a self-portrait, three-quarter length, in a black tunic over a red doublet, a card in his right hand, a book and an engraver’s tool on the ledge before him,
signed, inscribed and dated lower right (on the card in the sitter’s hand): 1552. po Aprile/Anto baylo pictor...,
oil on canvas, 113 x 97 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Casa Ercolani, Bologna (1769);
Robert Stayner Holford (1808–1892), Dorchester House, London;
Sir George Lindsay Holford, Westonbirt, Gloucesestershire;
Arthur Thomas Loyd, Locking House, Wantage;
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 25 June 1969, lot 40 (as Antonio Badile);
Private European collection

Exhibited:
Columbus, Gallery of Fine Arts, The Age of Titian, 1946, p. 12, no.11 (as Giovanni Battista Moroni);
Denver, Art Museum, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art, 1947-48, p.11, no.15 (as Giovanni Battista Moroni);
Winnipeg Art Gallery Association, Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance, 1953, p. 27, no. 34 (as Giovanni Battista Moroni);

Literature:
R. Benson, The Holford Collection, Oxford 1924, p.67, no. 56 (as attributed to Giovanni Battista Moroni);
M. Azzi Visentini, Un’opera inedita di Antonio Badile, in: Arte Veneta, 28, 1974, p. 245;
E. Calbi/D. Scaglietti Kelescian, Marcello Oretti e il patrimonio artistico privato bolognese. Indice, Bologna 1984, p. 33;
S. Marinelli, 37. Antonio Badile, in Veronese e Verona, Verona 1988, pp. 288-289;
S. Marinelli, Verona 1540-1600, in: M. Lucco (ed.), La pittura nel Veneto. Il Cinquecento, Milan 1998, vol. II, p. 809;
A. Zamperini, Workshops and Artists in Verona: the Production System, in: E. Karet, The Antonio Badile II Album of Drawings: the Origins of Collecting Drawings in Early Modern Italy, London/New York 2017, pp. 63-65, fig. 2.25

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 31394) as Antonio Badile.

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

Antonio Badile was a member of a prominent family of artists, painters and sculptors, whose activity stretched over centuries at Verona; he was the son of Girolamo, an engraver. For a long time his date of birth was believed to be 1480, however this must be adjusted to about 1518 on the basis of an inscription on the verso of an altarpiece in the church of San Nazaro e Celso at Verona, wherein he declares himself to be twenty-five years old. After initial training with his uncle Francesco, a painter, who raised him in his own home from the age of twelve after the death of his father, he was apprenticed for a time with Giovan Francesco Caroto. He was the master of Paolo Veronese, who was to become his son-in-law.

The present painting has traditionally been identified as a Portrait of an engraver, but according to Azzi Visentini (see literature) the individual represented in half-length, three quarter view, with his gaze turned upon the viewer, could in fact be a self-portrait. Indeed, there are artist’s tools, represented in the container on the furniture to his right. In the painting’s left background, a broad window opens out onto a city view, which may depict a street in Verona where the artist lived.

Mauro Lucco has endorsed the suggestion that the present painting is a self-portrait of the artist and he suggests that the depiction of an ink-well and two quill pens on the table allude to the sitter’s profession; on the other table before him, there is an album which bears the inscription ‘1552 / GROSO’ to which he points, this according to Lucco most probably refers to an album of drawings which belong to Antonio II Badile (the grandfather of Antonio Badile, and also an artist who has traditionally been identified as the ‘Maestro del Cespo di Garofani’); and on the right, placed on various papers, there appears to be a burin: a tool used for engraving. According to Lucco, the present portrait should be interpreted as a self-portrait, that simultaneously glorifies the artist’s family, as well as the individual who was at the time receiving acclaim as the master of Paolo Veronese, who in turn was then receiving his first great public successes.

Antonio Badile’s work as a portraitist is exemplified by the Portrait of Fra Salvo Avanzi in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice. During the 1550s, the period to which the present portrait belongs, Badile’s artistic activity was at its height. The present painting was once part of the prestigious collection of Robert Stayner Holford (1808-1892), one of the most distinguished British collectors of the nineteenth century (see also lot 37). He was a wealthy landowner and a scholarly collector of Old Masters, rare books and manuscripts. Between 1851 and 1853 he built Dorchester House in Park Lane, London to accommodate his collection.