On 10 November, Bernardino Campi’s outstanding Portrait of a Gentleman with a Dog will be auctioned.
The Art of Portraiture
The Portrait of a Gentleman with a Dog is a significant addition to Bernardino Campi’s portraiture of the 1550s, during which time he was especially favoured by the Milanese aristocracy. The present painting is characterised by a highly balanced composition and a refinement of palette and technique. The size of the canvas and the courtly composition signal the subject’s position of social prestige, however identification of the sitter is hindered by the lack of inscriptions or identifying attributes.
Bernardino Campi’s refined treatment of the sitter´s long slender hands of almost pearlescent quality, is typical of his oeuvre, as are the highly attentive rendering of the features which are precisely characterised, and the care in describing the introspection of the expression of the sitter.
This Portrait of a Gentleman ranks among the highest points of Campi’s portraiture. The biographer Alessandro Lamo, stated that Campi ‘has had so much felicity and facility as a portraitist from life, such as no other painter had in our times, so-much-so that as well as conducting them with great grace of design, by-God he gave them the likeness of life, and a certain air of sweetness that we marveled at.‘
Bernadino Campi was the son of a goldsmith, who not only introduced his son to the art of goldsmithry but also trained him to become a painter. In Mantua, Campi was apprenticed to Ippolito Costa and met Giulio Romano. A commission from Isabella of Capua, the wife of Ferrante Gonzaga, led him to Milan and established his reputation as a portraitist. When Bernadino Campi died, he was almost 70 years old. His most famous pupil was Sofonisba Anguissola.
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