Lot 22: - Isidoro Bianchi , Campione 1602 - 1690 Milan An Allegory of Love and Wisdom oil on canvas

oil on canvas

measurements note 150.5 by 173 cm.; 59 1/4 by 68 in.

M. De Angelis, Isidoro Bianchi, Bergamo 1993, p. 91;
D. Pescarmona, Isidoro Bianchi 1581-1662 di Campione, Milan 2003, p. 17.

IRSA, Vienna;
Acquired by the present owner in 1988.

Isidoro Bianchi di Campione seems to have been active at the start of the century as a fresco painter in the Como area. His first recorded work is a fresco cycle for the Cistercian monastery attached to the Abbey of Santa Maria dell'Acquafredda, 1598-1601. Between 1605 and 1606 he is recorded as having visited the court of Rudolph II in Prague, after which he returned to Lombardy and studied under Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, called il Morazzone. It was through his connection to Morazzone that he entered the patronage of the ducal house of Savoy. He was first employed to finish the deceased Morazzone's fresco cycle in the grand salon of the Savoy palace at Rivoli before being appointed court painter and knighted by the Duke in 1631. Many of Bianchi's works have a distinctly Lombard quality but the present painting is a rare example of the impact his trip to Prague had on his style. The unusually large allegorical composition is clearly influenced by Bartholomäus Spranger's painting of a similar subject, known through an engraving by Lucas Kilian (fig. 1) and thus an execution date in the second half of the first decade of the 1600's is likely.