''Portrait of an Actor'' (; ; ) is a painting by

Domenico Fetti Domenico Fetti (also spelled Feti) (c. 1589 – 1623) was an Italian Baroque painter who had been active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice. Biography Born in Rome to a little-known painter, Pietro Fetti, Domenico is said to have apprenticed ...

in the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...

in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was probably painted in 1621 or 1622 in

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

, Italy. The sitter, who is holding a theatre mask, is believed to be a '' commedia dell'arte'' actor, either

Tristano Martinelli Tristano Martinelli (c. 1556 – 1630), called ''Dominus Arlecchinorum'', the "Master of Harlequins", was an Italian actor in the ''commedia dell'arte'' tradition. He is probably the first actor to use the name 'Harlequin' for the ''secondo zanni' ...

Francesco Andreini Francesco Andreini (c. 1548 – 1624) was an Italian actor mainly of commedia dell'arte plays. He began his career playing the role of the unsophisticated love-stricken young man. Later he played the role of Capitan Spavento ("Captain Fright ...

."Portrait of an Actor (Tristano Martinelli or Francesco Andreini ?)"
archived from the original on 14 January 2015, retrieved 21 April 2016, originally at the Hermitage Museum website. There is a well known copy of the portrait by an unidentified artist in the

Gallerie dell'Accademia The Gallerie dell'Accademia is a museum gallery of pre-19th-century art in Venice, northern Italy. It is housed in the Scuola della Carità on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was originally the gallery o ...

in Venice.

Provenance

The first record of Fetti's portrait is a 1653 inventory of

Cardinal Mazarin Cardinal Jules Mazarin (, also , , ; 14 July 1602 – 9 March 1661), born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino () or Mazarini, was an Italian cardinal, diplomat and politician who served as the chief minister to the Kings of France Louis XIII and Louis X ...

's collection at the Palais Mazarin in Paris, where it is described as "Harlequin, sur toile, par Fety arlequin, on canvas, by Fetti. An inventory drawn up after the Cardinal's death in 1661 lists it as item 1266: "Un autre faict par Fety (1), sur toile, représentant ''Harlequin, comédien, tenant un masque'' nother work by Fetti (1), representing ''Harlequin, actor, holding a mask''. The painting was later in the collection of

Pierre Crozat Pierre Crozat (1665–1740) was a French financier, art patron and collector at the center of a broad circle of ''cognoscenti''; he was the brother of Antoine Crozat. Biography The brothers Crozat were born in Toulouse, France, the sons of a we ...

and reproduced as ''Portrait de Comédien'', an engraving by in the '' Recueil Crozat'' (1729), where it is noted that the actor had been in the service of the Duke of Mantua. It is also mentioned in an inventory made after Crozat's death in 1740 and was inherited by Crozat's nephew, Louis-Antoine Crozat. It was described in a 1755 inventory as a portrait of a "Comédien la tête découverte, tenant un masque d'Arlequin; par le Feti ctor, head uncovered, holding a Harlequin mask; by Fetti. After the death of Louis-Antoine Crozat, it was sold by his heir in 1772 to Catherine II of Russia and is mentioned as being in the collection of the Hermitage Museum beginning in 1774.

Identification of the sitter

Since the late 19th century, the identity of the sitter in Fetti's ''Portrait of an Actor'' has been a subject of much interest and disagreement. Among the portraits painted by Fetti during his stay at the Gonzaga court of Mantua (1614–1622), few have been identified with certainty, but none of the others have engendered as much attention as this one. Pamela Askew explains: "The reason undoubtedly lies in its impressive power of characterisation and execution. In many respects

t is T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is der ...

the grandest and most penetrating of Fetti's portraits."Askew 1978, p. 59.

Former attributions

Eduard Safarik, author of a 1990 monograph on Fetti, lists five persons previously proposed by others as the subject of Fetti's painting: the actors Francesco Gabrielli,

Giovanni Gabrielli Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557 – 12 August 1612) was an Italian composer and organist. He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School (music), Venetian School, at ...

Giovanni Battista Andreini Giambattista Andreini (9 February 1576 – 7 June 1654) was an Italian actor and the most important Italian playwright of the 17th century. Life Born in Florence to stage stars Isabella Andreini and Francesco Andreini, he had a great success as ...

, and

, and the composer Claudio Monteverdi. Of these, apart from Martinelli, only two, Giovanni Gabrielli and Monteverdi gained wide currency.

Giovanni Gabrielli

Brüiningk and Somoff, editors of the 1891 catalogue of the Hermitage Museum's Gallery of Paintings, identified the subject of Fetti's portrait as the Italian ''commedia dell'arte'' actor Giovanni Gabrielli, whom they equated with the much younger subject in Annibale Carracci's ''Portrait of a Lute Player'' (). The three-way correlation of Fetti's ''Actor'' and Annibale's ''Lute Player'' with Agostino Carracci's engraved ''Giovanni Gabrielli'' () was traced by

Denis Mahon Sir John Denis Mahon, (8 November 1910 – 24 April 2011) was a British collector and historian of Italian art. Considered to be one of the few art collectors who was also a respected scholar, he is generally credited, alongside Sacheverel ...

, who questioned it in 1947. The errors were compounded in 1962, when Henner Menz, director of the

Dresden Gallery Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth lar ...

, where Annibale's painting is located, gave it the title ''Portrait of the Lute-player Giovanni Gabrielle'' and described it as a "picture of a musician", leading to a confusion of the actor with the similarly named Venetian composer

Giovanni Gabrieli Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557 – 12 August 1612) was an Italian composer and organist. He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift f ...

. These misidentifications lingered, despite Posner's outright rejection of them in 1971, when he named the subject of the ''Lute Player'' as a member of the Mascheroni family of

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...

, based on

Carlo Cesare Malvasia Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–1693) was an Italian scholar and art historian from Bologna, best known for his biographies of Baroque artists titled ''Felsina pittrice'', published in 1678. Life and career Malvasia is the Bolognese equivalen ...

's description of the sitter in his 1678 book ''Felsina Pittrice''. For example, the popular book, ''Five Centuries of Music In Venice'' by H. C. Robbins Landon and John Julius Norwich, published in English, Italian, French, and Japanese, as a companion to the five-part television series ''Maestro'', included a full-page color plate of the ''Lute Player'' as a portrait of Gabrieli the composer in 1991. In 1978 Askew strongly supported Posner's identification of the sitter as a member of the Mascheroni family, and more recently the Dresden gallery identified the sitter as Giulio Mascheroni of Bologna. File:Portrait de Comédien, etching and engraving after Domenico Fetti - Gallica 2011 (cropped, adjusted).jpg, Engraving after Fetti, from the '' Recueil Crozat'', 1729 File:Giovanni Gabrielli, engraved portrait by Agostino Carracci - Art Gallery NSW.jpg,

, , by Agostino Carracci File:Portrait of a Lute Player by Annibale Carracci - Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden.jpg, ''Portrait of a Lute Player'' by Annibale Carracci, (

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

)

Claudio Monteverdi

De Logu suggested the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi in 1967. However, this attribution has also been rejected.Askew 1978; Stevens 1994; Schuetze 2005, pp. 167–168. Stevens and Schuetze cite De Logu (1967, Monteverdi) and Askew (1978, Martinelli), but overlook Safarik (1990, Andreini). File:Portrait of an Actor, copy after Fetti, detail - Robbins-Landon 1991 p60.jpg, Detail from a copy of Fetti’s ''Actor'' (

Accademia, Venice The Gallerie dell'Accademia is a museum gallery of pre-19th-century art in Venice, northern Italy. It is housed in the Scuola della Carità on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was originally the gallery ...

) File:Claudio Monteverdi, engraved portrait from 'Fiori poetici' 1644 - Beinecke Rare Book Library (adjusted).jpg, Portrait of Monteverdi from the title page of ''Fiori poetici'', 1644 File:Claudio Monteverdi 4.jpg, Detail from a portrait of

Monteverdi Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is consider ...

by Strozzi,

Current attributions

Tristano Martinelli

Askew first suggested

in 1954 and published a detailed analysis in ''

The Burlington Magazine ''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation s ...

'' in 1978. Martinelli, probably the first actor to use the name

Harlequin Harlequin (; it, Arlecchino ; lmo, Arlechin, Bergamasque pronunciation ) is the best-known of the '' zanni'' or comic servant characters from the Italian '' commedia dell'arte'', associated with the city of Bergamo. The role is traditional ...

for the masked ''secondo

zanni Zanni (), Zani or Zane is a character type of commedia dell'arte best known as an astute servant and a trickster. The Zanni comes from the countryside and is known to be a "dispossessed immigrant worker".Rudlin, John. ''Commedia dell'arte: An Act ...

'' role, and the most famous Harlequin up to the time of his death in 1630, commissioned numerous dramatic portraits of himself, three of which he sent to France when he was wanting to return to that country in 1626. One may have been Fetti's portrait, later acquired by Mazarin. The association of the name Martinelli with the portrait was first documented in 1912, when a copy in pastel, attributed to Fragonard (1732–1806), was sold in Paris as ''Portrait de l'auteur et acteur Martinelli''.Askew 1978, p. 64.

Francesco Andreini

The Fetti scholar Eduard Safarik proposed the Italian actor

as the subject of Fetti's portrait in 1990. Andreini began his career as the ''

innamorato ''Gli Innamorati'' (, meaning "The Lovers") were stock characters within the theatre style known as commedia dell'arte, who appeared in 16th century Italy. In the plays, everything revolved around the Lovers in some regard. These dramatic and po ...

'' (male lover) and later became famous in the role of Capitano Spavento da Vall'Inferna. He also sometimes played the Sicilian

Doctor Doctor or The Doctor may refer to: Personal titles * Doctor (title), the holder of an accredited academic degree * A medical practitioner, including: ** Physician ** Surgeon ** Dentist ** Veterinary physician ** Optometrist *Other roles ** ...

, the shepherd Corinto, and the

necromancer Necromancy () is the practice of magic or black magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions, or by resurrection for the purpose of divination; imparting the means to foretell future events ...

Falsirone. Safarik's attribution is based on a comparison of Fetti's portrait (and a drawing, presumably a study for the portrait) to the frontispiece of Andreini's ''Le Bravure di Capitano Spavento'', engraved by Abraham Tummerman and first published in 1609 in Venice.Safarik 1990, pp. 284–287, cited b
Sotheby's
The Hermitage painting was shown with the title ''Portrait of Fancesco Andreini'' at a 1996 exhibit (organized by Safarik) at the

Palazzo Te or is a palace in the suburbs of Mantua, Italy. It is a fine example of the mannerist style of architecture, and the acknowledged masterpiece of Giulio Romano. Although formed in Italian, the usual name in English of Palazzo del Te is not that ...

in Mantua. File:Portrait of an Actor - Domenico Fetti - Hermitage ГЭ-153, detail.jpg, Detail of the portrait ( Hermitage Museum) File:Portrait of an Actor, drawing - Domenico Fetti - Sotheby's 24 January 2007 lot 37.jpg, Drawing for the portrait (sold by

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

) File:Francesco Andreini, engraved portrait from Le Bravure del Capitano Spavento 1607 - Bavarian State Library photo1 (adjusted).jpg, Frontispiece to

's ''Le Bravure di Capitano Spavento'', 1607 File:Portrait of Francesco Andreini in the costume of Capitano Spavento, at Viilandry - Fondazione Federico Zeri 112346 (detail).jpg, Detail of ''Portrait of Francesco Andreini as Capitano Spavento'', File:Portrait of Francesco Andreini in the costume of Capitano Spavento - Ferrone 2014 fig4.jpg, ''Portrait of Francesco Andreini as Capitano Spavento''

Museum attributions

In 2015 the curators of the Hermitage Museum identified the subject of Fetti's painting as either Tristano Martinelli or Francesco Andreini, but these attributions were subsequently removed. The

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, which has a print of the engraving from the ''Recueil Crozat'' (1729), identified the subject as Francesco Andreini."Portrait de comédien (Portrait of Francesco Andreini, after Fetti), etching and engraving"
The British Museum, retrieved 1 June 2022
Archived copy (28 January 2015)
The print was made by Nicolas de Larmessin.

Notes

Bibliography

* Aikema, Bernard (1997). "Fetti. Mantua" (review of an exhibition held in 1996 in Mantua), ''

'', vol. 139, no. 1127 (February), pp. 142–144. . *

Askew, Pamela Pamela Askew (February 2, 1925 – June 24, 1997) was an American art historian who wrote influential works on Domenico Fetti and Caravaggio. Askew's father was Arthur McComb, Professor of baroque art at Vassar College and Harvard University, ...

(1954). "Domenico Fetti", thesis presented at the

Courtauld Institute of Art The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist coll ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. . * Askew, Pamela (1978). "Fetti's 'Portrait of an Actor' Reconsidered", ''The Burlington Magazine'', vol. 120, no. 899 (February), pp. 59–65. . * Aumale, Henri d'Orléans, Duke of (1861). ''Inventaire de tous les meubles du Cardinal Mazarin. Dressé en 1653, et publié d'après l'original, conserve dans les Archives de Condé''. London: Whittingham & Wilkins
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at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

. * Baschet, Armand (1882). ''Les comédiens italiens à la cour de France sous Charles IX, Henri III, Henri IV et Louis XIII''. Paris: Plon
View
at

. * British Museum
"Portrait de comédien (Portrait of Francesco Andreini, after Fetti), etching and engraving"
at the British Museum website, accessed 29 January 2015. * Brüiningk, E.; Somoff, A. (1891). ''Ermitage Impérial. Catalogue de la Galerie des Tableuux. I. Les écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne'', third edition. Saint Petersburg: Imprimerie de la Cour Impériale
Copy
at Gallica. * Cosnac, Gabriel-Jules, comte de (1884). ''Les richesses du Palais Mazarin''. Paris: Librairie Renouard
1884 edition
at Gallica
1885 edition
at Google Books. * De Logu, Giuseppe (1967). "An unknown Portrait of Monteverdi by Domenico Feti", ''The Burlington Magazine'', vol. 109, no. 777 (December), pp. 706–709. . * Duchartre, Pierre-Louis (1929; reprint 1966). ''The Italian Comedy'', translated by Randolph T. Weaver. London: George G. Harrap (1929). . New York: Dover (1966). . * Hermitage Museum
"Fetti, Domenico – Portrait of an Actor (Tristano Martinelli or Francesco Andreini ?)"
at the Hermitage Museum website, accessed 29 January 2015. * Katritzky, M. A. (2006). ''The Art of Commedia: A Study in the Commedia Dell'Arte 1560-1620 with Special Reference to the Visual Records''. Amsterdam: Rodopi. . * La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Jean-Baptiste de (1755). ''Catalogue des tableaux du cabinet de M. Crozat, baron de Thiers''. Paris: de Bure aîné
Copy
at Gallica. * Landon, H. C. Robbins; Norwich, John Julius (1991). ''Five Centuries of Music in Venice''. London: Thames and Hudson.
Listings
at WorldCat. * Lehmann, Jürgen M. (1967). ''Domenico Fetti. Leben und Werk des römischen Malers'', thesis (doctoral), Frankfurt a. M. . * Mahon, Denis (1947; reprint 1971). ''Studies in Seicento Art and Theory''. London: Warburg Institute, University of London (1947). . Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood (1971). . * Malvasia, Carlo Cesare (1678). ''Felsina Pittrice. Vite de pittori bolognesi'', 2 volumes. Bologna: Domenico Barbieri
Digitized versions
at HathiTrust of copies from the

Getty Research Institute The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts".

. * Menz, Henner (1962). ''The Dresden Gallery'', translated from the German by Daphne Woodward. New York: Harry N. Abrams. . * Posner, Donald (1971). ''Annibale Carracci: A Study in the Reform of Italian Painting Around 1590'', 2 volumes. New York: Phaidon. . * Possenti, E. (1964). "Gli attori del teatro di prosa, in ''Il museo teatrale alla Scala'', edited by Giampiero Tintori. Milan: Edizioni del Museo Teatrale alla Scala. . * ''Recueil d'estampes'' (1729, 1742). Full title: ''Recueil d'estampes d'après les plus beaux tableaux et d'après les plus beaux dessins, qui sont en France dans le cabinet du Roy, dans celuy de Mgr le Duc d'Orléans, & dans d'autres cabinets, divisé suivant les différentes écoles, avec un abbrégé de la vie des peintres et une description historique de chaque tableau''. Paris: Imprimerie royale
vol. 1, part 1 (1729)vol. 1, part 2 (1729)
an
vol. 2 (1742)
at Gallica. * Richards, Kenneth; Richards, Laura (1990). ''The Commedia Dell'Arte: A Documentary History''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. . * Safarik, Eduard A. (1990). ''Fetti''. Milan: Electa. . * Safarik, Eduard A. (1996). ''Domenico Fetti 1588/89–1623'' (catalog for an exhibition in Mantua, 15 September – 15 December 1996, edited by Electa, curated by Eduard Safarik). Milan: Electa. . * Savoia, Francesca (2008). "Francesco Andreini", pp. 9–15 in ''Seventeenth-Century Italian Poets and Dramatists. Dictionary of Literary Biography'', volume 339, edited by Albert N. Mancini and Glenn Palen Pierce. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning. . * Schuetze, George C. (2005). ''Convergences in Music & Art: A Bibliographic Study''. Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press. . * Smith, Winifred (1930). ''Italian Actors of the Renaissance''. New York: Coward-McCann. . * Somof, Andrej Ivanov (1899). ''Ermitage Impérial. Catalogue de la Galerie des Tableuux. I. Les écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne''. Saint Petersburg: Compagnie d'Imprimerie artistique.
1909 edition (Imprimerie A. Böhnke)
at Gallica. * Sotheby's (2007)

accessed 29 January 2015. * Stevens, Denis (1994). "Martinelli, Not Monteverdi", '' Early Music'', vol. 22, no. 1, Monteverdi II (February), pp. 185–186. . * Stuffmann, Margaret (1968). ''Les tableaux de la collection de Pierre Crozat'', Paris: Gazette des Beaux-Arts. .

External links

* {{Commons category inline, Portrait of an Actor - Domenico Fetti 1620 paintings 17th-century portraits Crozat collection Paintings in the collection of the Hermitage Museum Prints and drawings in the British Museum category:Paintings by Domenico Fetti