Provenance: Private Collection, Mantova.
Shown below the card by Prof.ssa Arabella Cifani.
The painting looks like the classic portrait of private citizen of the early eighteenth century, noble or high-bourgeois, captured in his intimacy, with a dressing gown in silk velvet, white shirt undone, hair stylized with sobriety. This is a portrait scheme that from France radiated with great success throughout Europe, and also in Italy, where Giovanni Enrico Vaymer was particularly sensitive to this lesson. Among the artists to match this kind of portrait, we point out, in addition to the classic Hyacinte Rigaud (1659-1743) from which derives the use of a changing color and a particular evidence of the seric materials of the vestments, also Alexis-Simon Belle (1674-1734), an excellent court portrait painter. In this artwork the influence of the late activity of Rigaud in the early eighteenth century is evident in the treatment of the garments, when it passes from a portraiture of a aulic taste to one of more intimate and private taste, in the line with the style and new inclinations of Louis XV and his court, however the style of the work is not strictly French and therefore we believe we can attribute the painting to the ambit of the Genovese painter Giovanni Enrico Vaymer. Vaymer was born in Genoa in 1665, he was a pupil of famous painters, including G.B. Merano. Around 1679 he went to Rome where he attendedthe workshop of Gaulli and met Gio Maria delle Piane called the Mulinaretto, a painter with whom he was often confused. On his return to Genoa in 1684, he began with great success his work as a portraitist, dedicated especially to the local nobility, inspired by the elegance of French painting and the artwork of Van Dyck. He was called to the Sabauda court by King Vittorio Amedeo, who wanted to be portrayed with his whole family, and then in the second decade of the eighteenth century, by the new King Carlo Emanuele. Critics include him among the protagonists of the genovese portraiture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He died shortly after his return to Genoa in 1738. Very close to the style of the Vaymer appears in the portrait the taste for the changing and silky fabrics and the soft treatment of the hair. The lack of a background can be referred to a client who "playing to save" avoided expensive and superfluous elements ( a case often present in minor works of the Vaymer). The canvas appears to be a product of Vaymer's atelier which, as the sources recall, often collaborated with Carlo Antonio Durante, especially for the execution of the vestments. Work of pleasant decorative impact, it is in excellent condition of conservation.

Bibliography: La painture a Versailles, XVII siecle, Paris Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1998. Daniele Sanguineti, Gio Enrico Vaymer, Genova 1999. AA.VV. Portrait: le portrait dan les collections des musees Rhone- Alpes, Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 2001.