Giacomo Ceruti, 'Portrait of a Priest', early 1730s
About the work
Overview
An ageing man looks affably out at us, a hint of a smile on his lips. The cassock, collar and skull cap he wears indicate that he is a priest, though his identity is unknown. He is shown standing, in three-quarter length, his head and left hand starkly lit against a plain background. The portrait is astonishingly direct and we have a real sense of the priest’s physical presence – not just through his pointed stare but also because the strong lighting brings his lifelike features sharply into focus.
Formerly thought to be by the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, this painting is now attributed with certainty to the Lombard painter Giacomo Ceruti and is datable to the 1720s, when he was active in Brescia. Ceruti was an accomplished portraitist but also enjoyed considerable success as a painter of genre and low-life scenes – beggars, street-sellers and vagabonds (‘pitocchi’ in Italian) – which earned him his nickname ‘il Pitocchetto’.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- Portrait of a Priest
- Artist
- Giacomo Ceruti
- Artist dates
- 1697 - 1767
- Date made
- early 1730s
- Medium and support
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 99.7 × 78.1 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Bought, 1926
- Inventory number
- NG4205
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
Provenance
Additional information
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Michael Levey, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools’, London 1986; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
Bibliography
-
1956Levey, Michael, National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1956
-
1986Levey, Michael, National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1986
-
2001
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.