Portrait of a boy in a cuirass, oil on canvas, 39 x 29 cm, framed

We are grateful to Dr. Maria Teresa Cantaro and Dr. Marta Privitera for confirming the present painting as an autograph work by Lavinia Fontana on the basis of a photograph. The painting is accompanied by certificates. We are also grateful to Prof. Vera Fortunati for endorsing the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

This painting is a rediscovered work by one of the most important women portraitists of the Italian Baroque. Lavinia Fontana was a student of her father, Prospero Fontana, whose Mannerist style she adopted. Her first documented works date from 1575 on and were small devotional pictures, such as the Holy Family (Picture Gallery, Dresden). From 1577 on she lived in Bologna as a renowned portraitist. Paintings from that period are, among others, the Self-Portrait with Cembalo (Accademia di San Luca, Rome) and the Portrait of Senator Orsini (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux). Her portrait style reflects the formal approach of Central Italian models, but also reveals the naturalistic tendencies prevalent in the Northern Italian tradition.

In the 16th Century, portraits of children enjoyed great popularity at Italian and European courts. Whereas they had frequently been commissioned to demonstrate the fertility of a dynasty during the first half of the century, they represented an autonomous genre in the second half. They now functioned as votive gifts commissioned out of gratefulness for the recovery from illness, as a memento produced because of a child’s premature death, or they were made on the occasion of an important event in the life of the depicted child. Due to its stylistic characteristics, Maria Teresa Cantaro and Marta Privitera identified the present composition as a work by Lavinia Fontana. It fits in well with a series of children’s portraits Fontana painted at the beginning of her career. All of these depict members of the Bolognese nobility, with whom the painter was in close contact. The present painting can thus be dated to around 1580. In her extensive certificate, Dr. Cantaro points out that the picture was probably trimmed. As to the sitter’s identification, she suggests a member of the Bolognese patrician family Bianchini.