Inscriptions: verso, bottom left: Beaubrun l’ainé (Beaubrun the elder) Provenance : M. Polakovits, marked bottom right (L.3561); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1987, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829)
This black-chalk drawing is a copy after a work by the Italian painter Guido Ubaldo Abbatini (F. Petrucci, 2008), which was previously misattributed to Henri II Beaubrun, a portraitist from Ambroise in the service of Henri IV. It depicts Cardinal Orazio Giustiniani, a native of the island of Chios then under the rule of the Republic of Genoa. Due, in part, to his mastery of Greek, Giustiniani was instrumental in the rapprochement between the Roman and Orthodox churches. A cardinal under the pontificate of Innocent X, he served as librarian to the pope. Abbatini, a portraitist and historical painter in Rome, was involved in various religious commissions under the pontificate of Urban VIII and made many portraits, notably those of Popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII. Dated 1645, the year Giustiniani was appointed cardinal, Abbatini’s rendering is strongly influenced by the art of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in terms of color and the placement of the model, caught in the midst of his official duties. Abbatini participated in several projects for Giustiniani designing the interiors of chapels, earning him the nickname “slave in chains” from Passeri. After the cardinal’s death in 1649, Sébastien Vuillemont produced an engraving based on Abbatini’s portrait that isolates Giustiniani’s bust. Conceived for the Galleria Giustiniana, a vast work commissioned around 1631 to illustrate Giustiniani’s prestigious collection of antiques, Vuillemont’s etching was not distributed separately (S. D. Squarzina, 2003) and very few copies exist today. We know of one in a private collection and a second at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome. It is this engraved reproduction that our copyist used to execute his drawing, taking care to restore the effects of shadow provided by the lines of the graver through smudging. The technique of black chalk and smudging as well as the type of paper used allow us to date this work from the eighteenth century. E.B. and H.V. de S.
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