(Mantua 1535–1619 Rome)
Portrait of a Cardinal,
oil on panel, 135 x 168 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s Olympia, London, 3 July 2007, lot 342 (as Circle of Scipione Pulzone);
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
F. Petrucci, Pittura di ritratto a Roma. Il 600, III, Rome 2008, pag. 788
ill. 809 (as ‘Pittore attivo a Roma primo quarto del 600’)

We are grateful to Francesco Petrucci for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a digital photograph.

The young cardinal is portrayed seated at a desk and holding a note in his right hand, indistinctly inscribed ‘All Ill mo … / … / … Roma (?)’. The sitter is shown in three-quarter length, according to an established compositional type. Facchetti had used this compositional format before, for example, in his Portrait of a Cardinal, formerly at Dorotheum (13 October 2010, lot 366). Nevertheless, while retaining the principles required of official portraiture, Facchetti was successfully able to integrate a degree of naturalism in the present painting, reminiscent of Caravaggio.

The Lombard, Caravaggist character of Facchetti’s portraits are combined with a delicacy and elegance derived from the work of Gaetano Scipione Pulzone (Gaeta 1544–1598 Rome) who was the dominant official portraitist in Rome during this period, and the present painting can be compared to Pulzone’s Portrait of Alessandro Farnese conserved in the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Barberini, Rome (inv. no. 2217).

The features of the cardinal represented here are expressive, and the detailing of his robes, of the arm chair and of the drape behind him, are refined and realistic. The two latter elements are enough to define the cardinal in the surrounding space, resulting in a focused and modern composition. Flemish influences, discernible in the crisp detailing of the stitching of the robes and in the tassels of the chair could have reached Facchetti in Mantua, from his knowledge of the Gonzaga collections and his contact with Peter Paul Rubens, as evidenced by his Portrait of Maria de’ Medici in her Youth conserved in Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome (see F. Solinas, Il ritratto di Maria de’Medici giovane di Pietro Facchetti (1535-1613) nella galleria del principe Lancellotti, in: Le ‘siècle’ de Marie de Médicis, ed. by F. Graziani, F. Solinas, M. Fumaroli, Alessandria 2003, pp. 3-11).

Pietro Facchetti’s initial training, under the influence of the followers of Giulio Romano, occurred in Mantua where he entered the circle of artists employed at the court of the third Duke of Mantua, Guglielmo Gonzaga (1538–1587). In around 1665 Facchetti moved to Rome, as can be ascertained from various letters written by the Bolognese cardinal, Filippo Guastavillani sent to the court in Mantua (see A. Dessì, Nuova luce su Pietro Facchetti pittore di Casa Orsini, in: Arte Documento, no. 33, 2017, p. 125). His practice as an official portraitist was asserted by his painting of Domenico Fontana presenting the plans of the library to Sixtus V, dated to about 1588 and conserved in the Salone Sistino of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Facchetti was also active as a copyist, as an engraver and as an art agent for the Gonzaga family. Indeed, he served as councillor to the duke of Mantua in the acquisition of works by Rubens and of Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin which had been rejected by the monks of Santa Maria della Scala (see B. Furlotti, Le collezioni Gonzaga: il carteggio tra Roma e Mantova (1587–1612), Cinisello Balsamo 2003, p. 44).