Italian, Roman, 'Portrait of the Abbate Carlo Bartolomeo Piazza', late 17th century

A man with a distinctive beard and moustache sits in a red-upholstered chair looking out towards us. He wears an ecclesiastical robe – a black cassock, or soutane – and holds a geometric compass in his left hand. On the table to the left is an armillary sphere and a sheet of paper with a horoscope, in which the characters are not clearly legible. On it rests a book, inscribed along the edge of its pages: Efemer (the last letter is not certain). Technical examination including infrared reflectography and X-radiography has shown that the artist made substantial changes in the area of the still life: the book was originally turned with its spine towards the sitter and was inscribed along the top edge: Piaz:Vn. This book rested on a second book, also with the spine turned towards the sitter, inscribed: Efeme V. Sacr – words that were subsequently painted out.

The current inscription on the book allows the sitter to be identified as Carlo Bartolomeo Piazza (1632–1713), an erudite Milanese priest who had a successful career in the Roman Curia (papal court) and whose Efemeride Vaticana, an illustrated calendar of saints listing liturgical anniversaries organised by month and with a commentary for each day, was published in Rome in 1687 and dedicated to King James II of England. Piazza was born in Milan and soon entered the religious congregation of the Oblates, distinguishing himself as a learned ecclesiastic and occupying various posts in Milan and Padua before moving to Rome in the early 1670s. Piazza published widely, including a weighty pilgrim’s guide to Rome for the Holy Year of 1675 for which he was rewarded with the title ‘Abbate’ (abbot).

When this painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1908, it was thought to be a portrait of the astronomer Galileo Galilei by the Florentine painter Domenico Cresti, called Passignano (1558–1638). Given the identification of the sitter and Piazza’s probable age, the portrait was most likely painted in Rome in the late seventeenth century.