(Cremona 1549–1631)
Portrait of a Gentleman, a member of the Stanga di Castelnuovo family,
oil on canvas, 97.5 x 76 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Marco Tanzi for suggesting the attribution of the present painting and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The detailed rendering of the sitter’s features is defined and individualised with a delicate sense of psychological introspection. The description of the subject’s features is strikingly expressive, his dress is formal and refined. The presence at upper left of a coat of arms permits the identification of the sitter as a member of the Stanga di Castelnuovo family from Bocca d’Adda, a branch of the Stanga di Cremona.

The dignity of the pose and the severity of the dress, along with the book held by the sitter, signal him as a person of importance from this noble family: he may be identified as Giovan Battista, one of six ambassadors sent to Rome on behalf of the city in 1590.

Tanzi has dated this painting to around 1590-1610. Gervasio Gatti was the nephew of Bernardino Gatti, called il Sojaro (1495/96-1576), and he became an established court painter active in Cremona, Parma and Piacenza from 1570 until his death in 1630 (see V. Guazzoni, in: I Campi e la cultura artistica cremonese del Cinquecento, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1985, pp. 223-225).

The present painting can be compared to the Portrait of an elderly gentleman in the Museo del Seminario in Cremona and the Portrait of a Knight of Malta in the Museo Civico di Cremona (A. Ebani, Traccia per Gervasio Gatti ritrattista, in: Arte lombarda, no. 102-103, 1992, pp. 40-42). The open rendering of the face and the refined and clearly defined description of the sitter´s features are similar. The school of Cremona at the close of the sixteenth century included several portrait painters active, not only in Cremona, but also in Parma where they were employed by the Farnese court.