Lot 66: Nicolò dell'Abate Modena c. 1509/12-1571 Fontainebleau

Nicolò dell'Abate Modena c. 1509/12-1571 Fontainebleau
Portrait of a bearded man, bust-length, in a fur-trimmed robe and black hat, with the Order of Saint Michael
oil on canvas
22 x 18½ in. 55.7 x 47.2 cm.

Bologna, Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio, Mostra di Nicolò dell'Abate, 1 September-20 October 1969, no. 27.
Amboise, Hôtel de Ville, De l'Ordre de Saint-Michel à la Légion d'Honneur, 7 June -20 July 1970, no. 68.

S. Beguin, 'Niccolo dell'Abbate en France', in Art de France, no. 2, 1962, p. 115, note 6.
S. Beguin, Mostra di Nicolò dell'Abate, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, 1969, pp. 81-83, no. 27.

Gabriel Fodor Collection, Paris, by 1969, and by descent to his son.

Although Nicolò dell'Abate is only known to have trained with sculptors - his father and Antonio Begarelli - it seems that he had always been active as a draughtsman and painter. In his hometown of Modena he successfully decorated in fresco several palaces and executed a few religious pictures before he moved to Bologna in 1547. Nicolò travelled to Paris in 1552 at the invitation of Henry II, where he served for the next twenty years as Primaticcio's main assistant in the workshops of the royal Château of Fontainebleau. Not only did Nicolò collaborate on the Salle de Bal and the Galerie d'Ulysse, but he enjoyed considerable success with a refined private clientele, for whom he executed mainly landscapes. With Rosso and Primaticcio, Nicolò dell'Abate was one of the founders of the first 'Ecole de Fontainebleau', which largely initiated an independant tradition of French painting.

From his earliest works, Nicolò displayed a remarkable gift for capturing a likeness, as can be seen in the figures of the donor in the altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi (painted in 1540 in the Church of Santi Pietro e Polo in San Polo d'Ensza) or the highly individualized faces found in the Concert painted on the ceiling of the Camerino dell'Eneide of the Rocca Baiardo in Scandiano (executed circa 1540-45, transferred on canvas, Galleria Estense, Modena).

However, it was in the 1540s that Nicolò turned his attention to portraiture proper, and several of the portraits from this period are today considered masterpieces: The Portrait of a young man painted circa 1540-45 (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome) which was once attributed to Giorgione, and the Portrait of a man with a parrot (probably painted around 1550, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), long given to Parmigianino, are now recognized as signal works by dell'Abate.

The present portrait was probably painted in France, which would make it the unique surviving portrait from Nicolò dell'Abate's Paris career. According to an old tradition, Nicolò had painted the French king and queen, as an expression of gratitude when he first arrived in France in 1552, but these pictures are lost, and no independant portrait has been known with certainty to date from his French sojourn. The portrait was once attributed to François Clouet before being given to Nicolò dell'Abate by Giuseppe Fiocco in 1947. Sylvie Beguin, in the catalogue of the first monographic exhibition on the artist, underscored the influence on dell'Abate of the French Court portraitists, Jean and François Clouet and Corneille de Lyon, which is evident in the neutral background and the finely-painted features of the gentleman in the present lot. If the fur and the gilded embroideries of the sitter's costume seem rather Italian, the presence around his neck of the Order of Saint-Michel, which had been created in the previous century by Louis XI, might suggest that he was a French subject. However, inaccuracies in presentation of the Order may indicate that the sitter is a foreign -- perhaps Italian -- subject who was living in France.