Four previously unpublished portraits by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) are on display throughout the month of October at the Medici Museum in Florence. We owe their discovery to the conductor and musicologist Federico Maria Sardelli who is responsible for the catalog of Antonio Vivaldi’s works. He usually goes in search of lost or forgotten manuscripts to study and authenticate the new scores attributed to the “Red Priest”. This time his discovery is not musical but iconographic.
If the notes of the famous Venetian violinist resonate in our ears, his features are much more blurred in our retina. Very few portraits of Antonio Vivaldi are known: that of the Music Museum of Bologna, an engraving by François Morellon La Cave and a caricature by Pier Leone Ghezzi. They offer the image of a man with round cheeks and a domed forehead with thin, arched eyebrows, as well as a well-set nose. Always with his shirt unbuttoned on his chest, he is best recognized by his smile.
The 4 portraits of Antonio Vivaldi presented by the musicologist Federico Maria Sardelli.
So many characteristics that we find in these unpublished portraits. Their appearance resulted from the initiative of a luthier and collector who presented a painting in his possession to Federico Maria Sardelli. “This oil painting on canvas was attributed to the Venetian painter Giuseppe Nogari, he remembers. It was accompanied by a certificate from 1982 confirming its acquisition in 1924 by Leandro Bisiach from the Marquises Durazzo-Da Passano, at the Occimiano Monferrato castle. An excellent provenance since this castle was the residence of Marcello Durazzo, then holder of half of Antonio Vivaldi’s manuscripts, now preserved in the National Library of Turin. On the back of the painting, seals and inscriptions from the 18th century prove that the canvas comes directly from the musician’s final resting place in Venice. »
Federico Maria Sardelli then embarked on research on Giuseppe Nogari which brought him to the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. There he found a photograph of a painting identical in composition but of very superior workmanship which is still part of the collection of the conductor Francesco Molinari Pradelli near Bologna. “It was until now cataloged only as a generic Portrait of a musician. The real revelation of my investigation lies in the discovery of two other paintings attributed to Domenico Fedeli, known as Maggiotto.welcomes Federico Maria Sardelli. We see Vivaldi without a ceremonial wig, which reveals his strawberry blond hair, but he still has his shirt half open and his lively and witty smile. He is next to a man wearing a studio cap who has been identified as the painter Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, which suggests a hitherto unknown personal link between Vivaldi and this major artist of early 18th century Venice. » Everything suggests that an original double portrait, executed by Piazzetta himself, is the source of this series. It would thus have inspired different variations, whether replicas or isolated portraits.
