Catalogue Roberti Fine Art, TEFAF Maastricht 2026 (1) compressed - Flipbook - Page 88
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OTTAVIO LEONI
Rome 1578-1630
Portrait of a Gentleman with a Spanish collar
oil on silver, oval
6.1 x 4.7 cm.
painted 1625-1630
PROVENANCE
Private collection, France.
A young gentleman with an upturned, musketeer-style moustache gazes at us with an intense,
concentrated expression. He wears a dark doublet set off by a white Spanish collar.
This painting represents an important addition to Ottavio Leoni’s work as a miniaturist on metal in
Rome, given its close technical and stylistic affinities with the contemporary Portrait of Gabriello
Chiabrera in Chantilly (fig. 1) and with an earlier small-scale portrait in the Galleria degli Uffizi (fig.
2).² The latter, depicting an anonymous Knight of Malta and datable to around 1606–1610, is
particularly close to the present work in its rendering of costume and in its handling of light, while
the treatment of the flesh, applied with the tip of the brush, is closer to that seen in the likeness of
the Ligurian poet Chiabrera, now in France.
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