Portrait of a gentleman, full-length, with his dog,
oil on canvas, 191 x 121 cm, framed

The sitter in the present painting is depicted full-length in a room of a distinguished house, with his left hand resting on a table covered with a red cloth. On the right, the view through a window creates a connection to the outer world. Although the sitter’s identity is unknown, his elegant clothing and posture suggest that he was of wealthy origin. He is dressed in a black tunic over a greyish doublet, the white lace shirt cuffs emerge from his sleeves, and he wears a white ruff at his neck. The austere composition of this painting which conforms to the international standard of portraiture diffused throughout the courts of Europe at the time, is interrupted by the addition of a little dog. The animal lends a cheerful lightness to the scene moderating the cool rigidity of the composition. The inclusion of a dog was quite common in portraits of aristocrats. A comparable full-length portrait of a man with his dog by Lavinia Fontana was offered at Dorotheum on 10 November 2020 as lot 55.

The way in which light is used, illuminating selected parts of the figure while other areas of the painting are cast in dark shadows, can be observed in similar compositions by Lavinia Fontana, such as the portrait of Conte Gentile Sassatelli, a nobleman of Imola, sold at Sotheby’s.Milan on 14 June 2011 as lot 18 (signed and dated 1581). Here, as in the present painting, the subject is shown in full-length, standing beside a table, and an open door gives on to a succession of three rooms, culminating in a glazed window. This type of setting which was conceived by Lavinia’s father Prospero, was frequently used by her, especially in the early works. The sitter’s confident posture with the propped hand served not only to give character to the sitter, but also as a compositional technique to balance the depiction. Lavinia Fontana used this technique in several of her portraits of senators, scholars, clergy members and nobles (see M. T. Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana “pittora singolare”, Rome 1989, pp. 111, 133, 169, 171).

The elegant handling, the sensitive use of colour, light and shadow, as well as the overall arrangement of the composition in the present painting reflect both the formality of Central Italian models and the naturalistic tendencies of the Northern Italian tradition. The severity and cold directness in the present portrait leave hardly any room for superfluous descriptive details, but concentrates entirely on the rendering of the sitter’s essential features and social position.