MASP

Anthony van Dyck

Marquise Paola Lomellini Doria with her Children Preaching, Circa 1623

  • Author:
    Anthony van Dyck
  • Bio:
    Antuérpia, Bélgica, 1599-Londres, Inglaterra ,1641
  • Title:
    Marquise Paola Lomellini Doria with her Children Preaching
  • Date:
    Circa 1623
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre tela
  • Dimensions:
    221 x 152 x 3,5 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação Andrea Matarazzo, Severino Pereira da Silva, Ricardo Jafet e Alberto Quattrini Bianchi, 1951
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00189
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



The Lomellinis are a traditional Lombard family the origins of which reach back to the Middle Ages. In the late 12th century they attained a position of prominence in Genoa as traders, seafarers, and brokers whose activities earned them enormous power. Beginning in the 15th century this prominence was enhanced by coral trade operations. In about 1635, when they commissioned Andrea Ansaldo with the decoration of the family’s church, Chiesa dell’Annunziata di Vastato, the Lomellinis introduced the first statement of the baroque in Genoa. Ten years earlier, however, they were concerned with sitting for Van Dyck, as for the painting in the Masp Collection (Marquise Paola Lomellini Doria with her Children Preaching) and the monumental group portrait (265 x 250 cm) conserved at the National Gallery of Scotland, in Edinburgh (NGS 120). Contrarily to the notion proposed by Wittler (1928, p. 35), the identification of the characters in the Edinburgh painting suggested by Glück (1931) and Larsen (1980, n. 419) actually allows the identification of characters in the Masp painting. The woman in this canvas is not a Cattaneo, but Paola Doria, daughter of the doge Ambrogio Doria, who later became marquise Lomellini by wedding marquis Giovanni Francesco, son of Giacomo Lomellini, doge of Genoa between 1625 and 1627. Her two children portrayed are Agostino and Lavinia, who clearly appear to be a couple of years older in the portrait at Edinburgh. Larsen dated both paintings 1623-1625, whereas the canvases were probably painted two years apart, the Masp c.1623 and the Edinburgh, c.1625. Otherwise, the portraits are quite different in nature. The portrait at Masp was probably meant for private use. It was rendered in a home environment with a religious atmosphere. Here the family’s youngest son, Agostino, is dressed in an ankle-length robe, be it in recognition for a grace bestowed on him, be it in allusion to his future ecclesiastical career (Bardi 1982). The Edinburgh portrait is eulogistic and celebratory, perhaps prompted by the election of doge Giacomo Lomellini, the sitter’s father, in 1625. A recent examination of the Masp portrait revealed the existence of generalized repaintings that hinder a circumstantiated and conclusive assessment of the degree of conservation of the paint, apparently quite damaged. In his letter of January 9, 1954 to P. M. Bardi, Leo van Puyvelde, former general director of the Belgian Fine Arts Heritage, refuted the old and obviously mistaken identification of the sitter as Thomas Wenworth, earl of Strafford, in favor of a different identification: “Ce portrait est probablement celui de William Howard, Vicomte de Stafford, dont je vu un portrait semblable chez le marquis de Bute, à Cardiff Castle, et aussi une gravure de H. Robinson 1833, avec l’inscription ‘William Howard Viscount Stafford, from the original of Van Dyke in the collection of Marquis of Bute’. (...) Votre tableau est peut-être celui qui signale à Luton, Horace Walpole dans Anedoctes of Paintings, I, p. 332”. While regarding the work as being produced “totally by Van Dyck’s hand”, Glück (1931, p. 578) had previously considered, and then rejected, the hypothesis of identifying the sitter as William Howard, Viscount of Stafford (1612-1680), the third child of the celebrated Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel. In his kind letter of 2 February 1998, Oliver Millar also refuted this identification, claiming that “Lord Stafford had less distinguished face”. According to Millar, a copy of this painting “was said to be a portrait of Sir Edward Coke”, a jurist and political leader significantly active in the struggle against the royal prerogative of the Stuarts. However, the countenance of the portrait’s model bears no similarity with Sir Coke’s, rendered in a portrait by Paul van Somer (Inner Temple, London), for example. Furthermore, the model’s fairly young age excludes a priori his identification as Sir Coke (1522-1634), given the fact that the latter was nearly fifty years older than Van Dyck. Both the iconography and the autography of the marvelous Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman (William Howard, Viscount of Stafford ?) kept in excellent state of conservation deserve a circumstantiated study. The traditional suggestion of dating submitted by Matthiesen Gallery, of London, around 1638, has been validated by the extraordinary compositional coincidences involving the Masp portrait and the supposed portrait of Sir Thomas Chaloner, conserved at the Hermitage, that Weelock Jr. (1990, p. 302) dated c.1637.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

Source: Luiz Marques (org.), Catalogue of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo: MASP, 1998. (new edition, 2008).



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