Vittore Giuseppe Ghislandi, called Fra' Galgario

Anonymous sale, New York, Replica Shoes ’s, 25 January 2001, lot 176;

Acquired subsequently by the present owner.

Fra' Galgario, born Vittore Ghislandi in Bergamo in 1655 into a family of painters, trained initially in his native city in the studios of Giacomo Cotta (1627–1689) and Bartolomeo Bianchini (1634–1710). His formative years, however, were shaped above all by his sojourn in Venice during the 1690s, where he entered the studio of Sebastiano Bombelli (1635–1719). There he absorbed the luminous palette and fluid brushwork of the Venetian school, which he later fused with the more restrained and formal Bergamasque portrait tradition, developing a style that became entirely his own. In 1702, at the age of forty-seven, he entered the Order of the Minims in the monastery of Galgario in Bergamo, adopting the name of its patron saint. His refined, penetrating portraits, notable for their psychological depth and painterly freedom, won him a distinguished clientele both in Italy and beyond, counting among his patrons Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736) and the celebrated art collector Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661–1774). Fra' Galgario remained active until his death in 1743, leaving behind a body of work that stands as one of the high points of 18^th-century Lombard portraiture.