(Bologna 1529 – 1592 Roma)
Double portrait, oil on canvas, 120 x 96 cm, framed

The inscription, which was probably added in later years, identifies the male sitter as Andrea di Gian Giorgio Forti, member of a family of patricians from Tuscany-Emilia. On the table before him lies a costly oriental carpet. There are no orders by which one could identify the rank of the sitter. His short hairstyle indicates a military upbringing. In his hand he holds a small book with the Holy Scripture and seems just to have been interrupted in his reading. Alongside him a lady in profile was later painted in to whom the second coat-of-arms below the figure refers. Her hair is long and plaited into the nape of her neck. She is wearing a simple grey dress with gold braid. The relationship between the figures is obvious, even if moralising, lacking in sensuality with a great sense of propriety, imbued with the culture of the Counter-Reformation. The composition is comparable with the ‘Portrait of Sertorio Sertori in the Galleria Estense, Modena (A. Ghirardi, Bartolomeo Passerotti, pittore (15291592): catalogo generale, Rimini 1990, p. 215; J. Bentini, Sovrane passioni: le raccolte d’arte della Ducale galleria estense, exhibition catalogue, Milano 1998, p. 46). It is obvious that Passerotti was making recourse to classical prototypes which had spread throughout northern Italy. The representation of the face is similar to that in the ‘Portrait of a Maltese knight’ (formerly London, Colnaghi) and the ‘portrait of a nobleman dressed in black velvet with a feather hat’ (formerly London, Colnaghi 1976, later Matthiesen), as well as the ‘Portrait of a young man’, in the Halton Gallery, University of Newcastle (there is documentation relating to the latter at the Fondazione Federico Zeri in Bologna). For these stylistic reasons, one can date the portrait of Andrea di Gian Giorgio Forti to the years 1575–1580.
We are grateful to Emilio Negro for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Bartolomeo Passerotti.