A drinker
Although not of high quality, this painting was once ascribed to Micco Spadaro. This attribution was rightly rejected in favour of an unknown artist inspired by Flemish models. It shows a drinker, whose wrinkled face is characterised by an inebriated gaze from excessive consumption of wine, to the point that the depiction almost seems a caricature.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
19th-century gilded polyptych, 37 x 99 x 5.4 cm
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1833 (Inventory Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 25; Della Pergola 1955). Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1998-99 Carlo Festa (cleaning)
Commentary
The provenance of this painting is still unknown. The work was in fact only first mentioned in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1833, when it was described in the Inventario Fidecommissario as a panel by an unknown artist. At some point it was ascribed to Micco Spadaro (see Della Pergola 1955), an attribution which Adolfo Venturi (1893) reluctantly accepted but which was definitively rejected by Roberto Longhi (1928). For her part, Paola della Pergola (1955) revived it, but merely as an approximation.
The panel was probably a fragment of a larger work. It was undoubtedly inspired by northern European models, as is suggested by the subject, a drinker portrayed with a flagon in his hands, with a face bordering on caricature.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 447;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 85;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 186;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, I, Roma 1955, pp. 145-146, n. 265;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 38.
