Gaetano Gandolfi

Essay:

Gaetano Gandolfi was born in a small town near Bologna and began his career as a pupil of his older brother Ubaldo. Following his brother, Gaetano travelled to Bologna where he enrolled at the Accademia Clementina. Here he studied under Felice Torelli and Ercole Lilli and in 1760 the two brothers travelled to Venice where their first-hand contact with Venetian painters was decisive for them.

The influence of the Tiepolo family was particularly significant and was to influence the bothers greatly in both their oil paintings and palace decorations which was a fusion of the Rococo and Neoclassicism. In Bologna, Gaetano executed a number of important commissions including an 'Assumption' for the ceiling of the Church of Santa Maria della Vita, and for the Church of Santissimo Salvatore, a large composition of the 'Marriage at Cana'.

In Naples, he painted a large composition of the 'Martyrdom of Saint Pantaleon' for the Church of Girolimini as well as a superb self-portrait which is now hanging in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.

Gaetano Gandolfi was also a talented etcher and draughtsman. His drawings have a very strong and distinctive use of bistre and brown ink. His sketches on paper are wonderfully vivacious and subtle.

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This head of a child, perhaps Gaetano’s daughter Martha or son Mauro, is a rare and intimate painting by the great Bolognese artist. Many sketches of the heads of boys and girls (sometimes identified as his own children) exist and show tremendous subtlety. Painted head studies are significantly less common. As Keith Christiansen writes:

'In addition to his large-scale works, Gaetano—like Ubaldo and Gaetano’s son Mauro—was a master of the oil sketch and also painted numerous small canvases with heads. Some are portraits, but most are studies of figure types, carried out with great freshness. They are best understood as exercises in pictorial imagination—not unlike those done by Fragonard in France.'

This picture may be compared to the sketch at the Albertina (object no. 1871) and another work at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna (inv. no. 1681).

We are grateful to Professor Donatella Biagi Maino for confirming the attribution to Gandolfi made on the basis of a photograph.

Provenance:

With Appleby Bros., 27 William IV Street, London, 1955, according to a label, verso (as Chardin);
Private Collection, West Coast of Scotland.