(Bologna 1552–1614 Rome)
Portrait of Gerardo Giavarini, three-quarter-length,
inscribed lower left, on the edge of the table:
AETATIS SUAE ANNORUM XXV,
inscribed and dated upper right: GERADO GIAVARI/ NI CAVALLIERE./ CONTE PALATINO/ E PAGGIO DI PAPA/ CLEMENTE VIII/ MENTRE DIMORO/ IN BOLOGNA L’ANNO/ 1598,
oil on canvas, 130 x 103.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Wales, since at least 1927;
art market, London;
where aquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Maria Teresa Cantaro for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.

This painting depicts a young man aged twenty-five, as stated in the inscription visible on the carpet by the edge of the table, and he can be identified as Gerardo Giavarini according to the inscription, upper right, which also records the circumstances of the work’s creation. In 1598 Pope Clement VIII stayed in Bologna on his journey to Rome after having annexed Ferrara to the Papal States. In order to reward the Bolognese for their reception and loyalty, the Pope chose various young gentlemen to be created Knights Palantine, counts, and pages among them, Gerardo Giavarini.

Such an event would have been cause for pride and some of these young men commemorated their investiture with a portrait. Lavinia Fontana, then one of the most esteemed portraitists of the age, also produced another similar portrait which is known only from a print, the Portrait of Orazio Verardinio. The compostion is similar to the present painting, showing a young man standing three-quarter-length, accompanied by an inscription (see M. T. Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese ‘pittora singolare’, Milan 1989, p. 191, no. 4a.86).

Gerardo Giavarini is shown standing, three-quarter-length, while his proud gaze is turned upon the viewer; to his right there is a table covered by a red carpet decorated with geometric motifs, which is a knight’s feathered helmet. The sitter points to a little painting representing Venus and Cupid next to the helmet. Lavinia Fontana painted this subject on several occasions and the present rendering appears to be modelled after her own compositions. The amorous subject of the little painting may well allude to the fact that the present portrait was intended to be dedicated to the young woman promised in marriage to Giavarini.

Laivina Fontana first studied with her father, the Mannerist painter Prospero Fontana in Bologna.Her earliest known works date to the 1570s and are small devotional works on copper or wood, such as the Holy Family in the Gemäldegallerie, Desden. She later become established as a portrait painter in Bologna and works of this date include the Self-portrait at the Harpsichord in the Galleria dell´Accademia di San Luca and the portrait of Senator Orsini. Her portrait style reflects the formality of Central Italian models as well as the naturalistic tendencies of the North Italian tradition.

As a female painter trained by her father Prospero, Lavinia was unusual and to some extent she would have been guided by Sofonisba Anguissuola who was considered the model lady painter at the time. Sofonisba´s fame and virtuous life, including a period in the Spanish court, made it respectable for other women to persue artistic careers, especially in Bologna, a city that was sensitive to female creativity especially due to the example of Caterina de´ Vigri or Catherine of Bolgna (1413-1463), prioress of the Poor Clares, who was celebrated as an amateur painter working from a convent, as well a a spiritual example and she would later be canonized in 1712.

A woman needed to be virtuous and conform to convention if she aimed to persue a profession outside the domestic environment and it is significant that the biographer Carlo Cesare Malvesia should have mentioned the virtues of honorable ladies when describing Lavinia in 1678: despite enjoying fame and being treated like a princess by the high society of Bologna, who sought her out and wished to have their portraits painted by her.(see L. Ruiz A Tale of Two Women Painters, Sofinisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana, exhibition caltolgue, Madrid, 2019).

In Rome she enjoyed the partonage of the family of Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585) and she was one of the first women to excuted large and publicly commissioned figure paintings, but it was Lavinia prestige as a portraitist, such as the present work which accounted for much of her fame and led her to compete with male artists and Malvasia compared her success as a portraitist to that of Van Dyck (see M.T. Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolgnese,1989 p.323). Lavinia was the first painter to be aknowleged as a professional and she succeeded in surpassing the boundaries imposed on women at the time.