PIETRO DELLA VECCHIA Lot n° 81

(Vicenza, 1603 - Venice, 1678) Portrait of a young man with hat Oil on canvas, 64X53 cm A pupil of Padovanino, Pietro Muttoni was a personality attentive to the culture of his time. It is not surprising, then, that he was passionate about evoking the manners and themes of sixteenth-century lagoon art, often evoked with flair and irony, while his Baroque tension can be clearly perceived by observing the drafting and illustrative themes that seem to be influenced by the Commedia dell'Arte but also by examples of Bamboccianti and Caravaggio. This last aspect also seems to confirm the hypothesis of his apprenticeship between 1619 and 1621 in the workshops of Carlo Saraceni and Jean Le Clerc, thus explaining his predilection for those subjects with coffins and soldiers typical of early Roman naturalism. Also in the same vein, looking at Renaissance examples, is the canvas presented here, which combines the vivid colours of the lagoon with the models of sixteenth-century portraiture and, at the same time, displays an exuberance fully in keeping with the Baroque age. From a stylistic point of view, this portrait of a young man corresponds to the Allegory of Youth and Old Age sold by Sotheby's in New York on 22 January 2004, lot 211. Reference bibliography: R. Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del Seicento, Venice 1981, I, pp. 172 ; 180; II, figs. 500 -538 AA.VVV. Pietro Della Vecchia, a profile, in Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte, XIV (1984), pp. 79 ; 100: 169 -206 E. M. Dal Pozzolo, Il fantasma di Giorgione. Stregonerie pittoriche di Pietro della Vecchia nella Venezia Falsofila del '600, Treviso 2011, ad vocem