Antique 17th Century Portrait

"Portrait of a notary" Oil on canvas 123x94cm The pictorial quality and stylistic peculiarities it has in the context of Maria Giovanni delle Piane known as "Molinaretto" The extraordinary work entered the collection in the frame of Molinaretto, born to Giovanni Maria delle Piane (Genoa 1660-Monticelli d'Ongina 1745) Born in Genoa, in the important Delle Piane family (but descendant of a miller from which he derives the nickname "Mulinaretto"), Giovanni Maria Delle Piane was first trained in the hometown of Giovanni Battista Merano (1632-1698), but at the age of 16 he moved to Rome at the Baciccio school, where he practiced the works great masters (Giulio Romano, Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Domenichino) discovering the portrait and revealing a particular penchant for this kind of painting. Returning to Genoa in 1684, a year after the death of Giovanni Bernardo Carbone, the main Genoese portrait painter of the first half of the 17th century, he soon became the portrait painter most in demand by the local nobility: among his first portraits was the one by Gian Battista Cattaneo with his wife Maddalena Gentile and one of his daughters, and that of Doge Pietro Durazzo, in the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola. By assimilating the fashion of the French portrait (evoking in particular the production of Hiacynthe Rigaud and Laguillère) and thanks to its ability to grasp the festive needs of the time, to adapt to new trends, to satisfy the desire for self-celebration rich and powerful clients, Delle Piane brought a stylistic innovation to Genoese painting, characterized by the refinement of details and the worldliness of the characters, dressing "those of his characters in majestic and elegant drapes", capturing them in "certain new movements and spiritual ", such as the important eighteenth-century biographer CG Rats. His ability to mix worldliness and allegory, demonstrating the painter's “modern” sensibility, is clearly visible in the “Portraits of Giacomo Filippo II Durazzo and Barbara Durazzo Balbi (Genoa, collection Durazzo Pallavicini), from the mid-90s, pleasant inventions in which the young couple hide in the guise of Diane and a daring hunter.