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Title:
Portrait of a Painter
Object name(s):
Picture; Italian
Brief description:
A young man is shown in half length, his body turned slightly but with his gaze fixed firmly on us. His features are quite particular – a wide mouth, long and prominent nose, dark wavy hair and brown eyes – but his identity remains a mystery. He is clearly a painter: he holds a brush in one hand, with which he is mixing colours on the painter’s palette he grasps with the other.This may be a portrait of an artist or possibly a self portrait – it is difficult to tell which because in both instances artists were often shown in the act of painting. When this work entered the National Gallery’s collection in 1906, it was thought to be a self portrait by the Bolognese painter Benedetto Gennari (1633–1715). Although both the artist and sitter have yet to be convincingly identified, the picture is probably Emilian (painted by an artist from Emilia-Romagna) and datable to the mid-seventeenth century.
Collection:
National Gallery
Accession date:
1906-01-01
Date - earliest / single:
1906
Date - latest:
1906
Acquisition source:
Anna Louisa Cohen
Associated concept:
artists
Credit line:
Bequeathed by the Misses Cohen as part of the John Samuel collection, 1906
Current location:
Not on display
Current reproduction location:
353/391/410/mid_N-2106-00-000015.jpg
Dimension:
Height
Dimension measured part:
Overall
Dimension measurement unit:
cm
Dimension value:
64.10
Dimension:
Width
Dimension measured part:
Overall
Dimension measurement unit:
cm
Dimension value:
51.40
Form:
None
Material:
oil
Material:
canvas
Material:
oil on canvas
Object name:
Picture; Italian (Emilian)
Object production date:
Date - period:
1650-74
Object production date:
about 1650
Date - earliest / single:
1650
Date - latest:
1650
Object production person:
Italian, Emilian
Object production place:
Italy
Other number:
NG2106
Other number type:
object number
Other number:
0G7K-0001-0000-0000
Other number type:
PID
Other number:
NG2106
Other number type:
display number
Other number:
000-04MY-0000
Other number type:
PID (NG alternative)
Other number:
ng32106
Other number type:
sort number
Owner:
John Phineas Jochanan Samuel
Responsible department/section:
Main Collection
Right note:
To encourage the use and reuse of the National Gallery's collection data, they are released under the following dedications and licences: Structured data (as opposed to narrative texts) are released under a Creative Commons Zero dedication (CC0): https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Descriptions, notes and all other narrative text content are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 licence (CC BY-NC-ND): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Style:
half length portraits
Style:
male portraits
Style:
baroque
Style:
academic
User's reference:
National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools
Reference details:
106
Reference note:
Latest catalogue
Reference type:
reference
User's reference:
The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue
Reference details:
338
Reference note:
Key bibliography
Reference type:
reference
User's reference:
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools
Reference details:
106
Reference note:
Select bibliography
Reference type:
reference
User's reference:
An Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery
Reference details:
126
Reference note:
Select bibliography
Reference type:
reference
User's reference:
Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the British and Foreign Pictures
Reference details:
289
Reference note:
Select bibliography
Reference type:
reference
User's reference:
Catalogue of Pictures by Italian Masters of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Collected by John Samuel
Reference note:
Select bibliography
Reference type:
reference
User's reference:
The Samuel Bequest to the National Gallery
Reference details:
36-7
Reference note:
Select bibliography
Reference type:
reference
User's reference:
Annual Report of the Trustees of the National Gallery for the Year 1906
Reference details:
16
Reference note:
Select Bibliography
Reference type:
reference

Persistent shareable link for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/e44c8d63-e627-38ec-9620-ff09f350aaf9

Use licence for this record: CC BY

Attribution for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/e44c8d63-e627-38ec-9620-ff09f350aaf9, National Gallery, CC BY

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