SIMON VOUET
1590 - Paris - 1649
Portrait of a Gentleman with his Dog
Oil on canvas
199.2 x 114.5 cm
Bullart and Félibien, as well as Florent le Comte, make much of Vouet’s early activity in the field of portraiture, and it was this talent that was the occasion for his early London visit to paint a “lady of high rank and great beauty,” as it was also for the subsequent trip to Constantinople where he painted the Great Sultan. These abilities were also in demand in Italy when the artist moved there, and ten years later in a couple of letters sent from Genoa, where he had gone for this same purpose, the artist, writing to Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (21 March 1621) and to Cassiano Dal Pozzo, referred to his commission to paint the portrait of Isabella Appiana, Princess of Piombino, for the former, her intended husband. Of these portraits, only a few bust-length pictures have so far surfaced, among them several self-portraits on a relatively small scale. Recently Carla Benocci has published a number of references to Vouet’s work for Paolo Orsini, who had probably been introduced to him by Dal Pozzo (see C. Benocci, Paolo Giordano Orsini nei ritratti di Bernini, Boselli, Leoni e Koremann, Roma, 2006, and E. Schleier, in exh. cat. Simon Vouet, Les annés italiennes 1613 - 1627, Nantes & Besançon, 2008/2009, p. 69). Another of ‘Sua Signoria Illustrissima’ on copper cost its patron a modest six scudi in 1618; Paolo Orsini seems to have used Vouet exclusively as a portraitist. Vouet appears to have gone to Genoa towards the end of 1620; after the artist’s return to Rome and the election of Urban VIII in 1623 he painted the new Pope and Cardinal Francesco Barberini; these portraits have not so far been discovered. The various portraits that are known do, however, demonstrate his great abilities and the life-likeness of his sitters, the most impressive so far are the self-portrait heads like the one in Arles. But it is surprising that none of his pictures known so far include any of the great full-length portraits of nobles who, we must suppose, would have sought out a painter with such a talent. What we read of in the sources underlines the scale of his production in this field, which has come down to us in a very small part. The technique of the ruff in this extraordinary portrait, with its rapid brushwork subtly indicating the successive layers of cotton, is the same as in the Self-Portrait of about 1620 (Exhibition Simon Vouet, Les années italiennes 1613/1627, Nantes and Besançon, 2008/2009, No. 1) or the Spadassino in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig (Fig. 21 in the same catalogue). The same bravura is to be seen in the Portrait of a Man at Hampton Court, (ibid., Fig 26), but the red lacquer of the costume is applied with a more virtuoso technique that is especially striking, and more colourful than most of the works of the Italian years. The fine brushwork in the detailed breast plate decoration, also echoes that of the arabesque embroidery and medallion in the beautiful St. Agnes (ibid. No.47) of c.1626 in terms of its impasto.
The Portrait of a Gentleman with his Dog was first recognized as Vouet’s work by Dr. Erich Schleier, and both Dominique Jacquot and Pierre Rosenberg concur. It is the first example that fills this great gap in the artist’s oeuvre. In the absence of any documentary information like a coat of arms, it has not been possible to identify the sitter, but his grand costume and swagger point to a high social rank.
The sparse setting, limited to a bare brown interior with no decorative detail that might compete for the viewer’s attention, is strictly intended to emphasize the spectacular profile of the noble sitter, who wears a splendid costume, that is striking, the marked shadows cast by the jacket on the shirt. Much naturalistic attention is devoted too to the small dog (here a pentiment shows a double profile for the nose) that matches the spontaneity of its master, keen to catch the slightest hint of a movement that would mean a command.
The style of the work points to a date in Vouet’s career around 1620-21, suggesting that it was painted in Genoa, a moment when his work is especially Caravaggesque in character. For in Vouet’s letter to Cassiano dal Pozzo of 4 September 1621 he wrote that his hosts in Genoa, Marcantonio and Gian Carlo Doria, had asked him to paint some portraits of them “m’ hanno pregato a far qualche loro ritratto, ciò che infin ora non avevo voluto fare in conto alcuno’(1). It has a certain parallel with the Portrait of a Gonfaloniere by Artemisia Gentileschi, now in the Museo Comunale (Palazzo Accursio) in Bologna. The Gentileschi is signed (on the reverse of the original canvas), and apparently dated 1622, a time when the artist was back in Rome, after traveling to Florence and possibly to Genoa. Although her presence in the city is not documented, it has been suggested that other pictures with a Genoese history, like the Lucretia formerly in the Durazzo-Adorno collection, may have been sent to Genoa from Rome at the beginning of the 1620s (see R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, Penn State, 2000, p. 190, Cat No. 13). The painting seems to have come from either the Gentile or Pepoli families in Bologna, and has some features that are paralleled in each, like the helmet on the table, and there is some indication that Vouet may have included a banner in the upper corner of his picture, subsequently not elaborated, but echoed in the Bologna painting. It may well be that the painting is of a member of the Doria family, and so linked with the over life-sized portrait of Giovanni Carlo Doria by Vouet now in the Louvre (RF 1979-20). This picture would appear to be referred to in a correspondence from Vouet with Cassiano Dal Pozzo (4 September 1621). From both of these grandiose images we can see how the young painter caught the spirit of his time, in employing the new realism that was essentially of Caravaggesque origin, in combination with a bombastic emphasis of the importance of his client. This is similar to the achievement of the young Van Dyck, in works like his grandiose state portrait of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio in Palazzo Pitti, Florence, which is generally accepted to have been painted in Rome in 1623.
The dating is also supported by some interesting reflections on the costume,for which we are indebted to Graziella Butazzi’s experience in this field, and which we can summarize here. Generally the habit suggests the military background of the sitter, referred to in the helmet on which he rests his right hand. The leather waistcoat lined with red cloth is fashioned and decorated like a breastplate, worn with the short pantaloons that were current at the end of the sixteenth century, but slightly longer here, as became fashionable in the first decades of the seventeenth century. The stiff revere below the waist is another feature of this period. The elaborate collar, of a type known as “à la confusion,” characteristic of the fashion in the first three decades of the century, an alternative to the stiff ruffs that were also current, gave the wearer greater ease of movement, and so was more suitable as military apparel. The open right boot with its flap folded down to below the knee certainly points to a wound that had been inflicted in battle or in a duel. Indeed, this leg does not have a close fitting sock as would normally have been worn inside the boot, but it is folded down revealing a striped bandage that must cover a wound.
We are grateful to Dr. Erich Schleier, who first recognized the painting as Vouet’s work, for his help in cataloguing this portrait.
(1) G.G. Bottari - S. Ticozzi, Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura... 1880, ed. 1976, Vol. I, p. 333: see also V. Farina, ‘Un’ ipotesi per un soggiorno genovese di Simon Vouet, Bollettino d’Arte, V serie, II, 2001, p.48/51
