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VIVAHOTELS FÜR FLORENZ


RESTORATIONS - "Portrait of a Man " - Bernardino Campi

::Bernardino Campi
Portrait of a Man
(attributed to Bernardino Campi - Reggio Emilia 1521 - 1591)
Oil on canvas, 75 x 60cm - Uffizi Gallery, Florence

 

In the Uffizi Catalogo Generale, edited for the first time in 1979, a card, added to the picture, attributes it to Girolamo Muziano, an important painter of Lombard origin, who worked for a long time in Rome, in the Counter - Reformation period. In the same card we can read the opinion of some people who thought that the represented man was Giovanni Gaddi, considered by Raffaello Borghini (an influential man of letters of that time) to be one of Muziano's clients. However, the just expressed opinion cannot be demonstrated according to the current knowledges. The portrait, which has a bold appearance, was painted in the middle of the 16th century and it was hoped to be restored since a long time. Restoration works should make us appreciate the picture quality level that now can just be guessed; moreover they should hopefully allow to solve the problem of the picture attribution. According to what we know at the present time, we can say that the portrait was paint by a very skilled painter, who worked in Lombardy, maybe between the cities of Brescia and Cremona, as it was for Lattanzio Gambara and Bernardino Campi. The painting attribution to Bernardino Campi (as Marco Tanzi, expert in Cremonese picture, cautiously suggested), would be a really important discovery, because in this case we would have a portrait whose painter was an appreciated portraitist, even if we still wait for clarifications about this particular aspect of his activity.

This painting was restored thanks to the initiative of the ROMUALDO DEL BIANCO FOUNDATION and the co-operation with the project "BE PART OF HISTORY" by VIVA HOTELS in Florence. The Project was created in order to give a contribution to Florence Artistic Heritage with restoration of pieces of art of different Florentine Museums.