CRISTOFANO DELL ALTISSIMO DIT CRISTOFANO DI PAPI... Lot 34

CRISTOFANO DELL ALTISSIMO DIT CRISTOFANO DI PAPI (Assigned to) Florence circa 1530 - id.; 1605 Portrait of the King of Persia Artaxerxes II (c. 436 - 358 BC) Oil on panel (old trace of vertical slit). Caption in capital letters at top left ARTOXER / XEX On the reverse side an old painted inventory number 248. H. 60 - W. 45 cm. A pupil of Bronzino and Pontormo, Critofano Di Papi, known as the Altissimo, was commissioned in July 1552 by Cosme I de' Medici to copy the portraits of famous men from the collection of Paolo Giovo, or Paul Jove (1483 - 1552), doctor, historian, prelate, humanist and collector, who had collected 400 of these portraits in his palace in Como, constituting the first museum of this kind (Cf. catalogue of the Jean Fouquet exhibition. 15th century painter and illuminator, n°3; pp.99 & 100 - BNF 2003) The similar wooden engraved portrait of the King of Persia Artaxerxes II, with his profile, tiara and the ornament of his mantle underlined by a string of pearls, appears in Paolo Giovo's work Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (1575), a praise of men of war made illustrious by their courage. In 1591 the majority of the copies made by Cristofani Di Papi were transferred to the Corridor of the Palazzo dei Uffizi where a number of them are on display. Our panel, which bears an old inventory number 248 on the reverse side, has the same dimensions (60x45 cm) as most of the portraits of the Altissimo kept in the Uffizi, and a type of blackened wooden frame with an inner gilded border similar to those that surround them. The spelling of the proper names in capital letters is identical, as is the inscription of some of them not across the entire width of the panel, but collected in the upper left part, as can be seen in the effigies of Caliph Selim I or the Vizier Aiaf, Bassa (Cf. Gli Uffizi. Cataloge General. Ic 409 & Ic12 - Firenze. Centro Di 1980)