Catalogue-2014-Jean-Luc-Baroni

3
Fede Galizia and Nunzio Galizia
The former Milan 1578-1630 and the latter documented in Milan between 1573 and 1610
A Double Portrait of Jacopo Menochio and Margherita Candiani, within an elaborate Trompe
L’œil Frame, decorated with the figures of Justice and Prudence.
The oval portraits, oil on copper, 10 x 8 cms. (4 x 3¼ in.), inserted into a walnut panel painted in brown,
black, gold and silver oil.
The panel: 25.5 x 31.3 cms. (10 x 12 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Alberigo XII D’Este (1725-1813), Principe di Barbiano e di Belgioioso (bears his label with
crest on the the back of the panel); Private Collection.
Literature: Alessandro Morandotti, Inventare in famiglia. Un pezzo di bravura nella Milano di Federico
Borromeo, in “Nuovi Studi”, IX-X, 2004-5 (but 2006), 11, pp.213-224.
This work is the result of a family collaboration between Nunzio Galizia, an illuminated manuscript painter,
and versatile master in many fields of artistic production and his daughter, the painter Fede, whose work
is better known. These are artists of particular importance in Milan in the period between mannerism and
baroque when the city was under Spanish rule. A seventeenth century inscription on the back of the panel
and transcribed onto a label provides details of the sitters, the artists and the date of the work: Jacobus
I Menochius Senatus Mediolanensis / Praeses et Margarita Candiana Uxor. / Fides pinxit, cujus Nuntius
Gallitius miniatura / exornavit 1606 (fig.1). The two oval portraits were executed by Fede Galizia and the
lavishly decorated trompe l’œil frame was the work of her father Nunzio. Interestingly, the miniaturist has
taken great care to specify the different dates of execution and the ages of the sitters: Jacopo Menochio was
painted in September 1605 at the age of 74 and Margherita Candiana, in October 1606, aged 64.
The framing decoration is conceived as an aedicule, decorated with exceptional attention to detail including
putti as they tie together garlands of fruit and foliage, a coat of arms with a rampant deer and an eagle and
highly convoluted strapwork, curtains and books, all given three dimensionality by the play of light and
shade. The figures of Justice and Prudence flank the two portraits while a winged figure standing on a globe
protectively rests her hands upon the egg and dart decoration around the portraits. Above each portrait
is a small symbol finely painted in oxidised silver: above Jacopo is a crane, standing for Vigilance, as the
inscription below confirms: VIGILAT UT IUVET and above Margherita Candiani is a dog with one paw
resting on a fruit, symbol of Fidelity, over the inscription BONUM UNITATIS. On the cartouche below the
portraits is a long inscription giving extracts from the Book of Ecclesiastes (25,1) and the Psalms (90,16), again
celebrating harmony and matrimonial happiness.
All these features are highly characteristic of the late
International Mannerist style, which encompassed
influences from the School of Fontainebleau to the
work emanating from the Court of Rudolph II in
Prague and was used for many types of decorative
work such as engraved frontispieces and the
ephemera decorations for civic events. It is possible,
as is suggested by his great skill, that Nunzio
Galizia himself worked as a book illustrator as did
other important artists of the time such as Giovanni
Battista Crespi, il Cerano or Giovanni Mauro della
Rovere and indeed the engraver like technique
with which the gold paint is applied with a very
fine brush, producing the same effect as a burin
1. Verso of the walnut panel, with labels, inscriptions and
early provenance.
on an engraver’s plate, supports this hypothesis.
Nunzio Galizia’s contact with engravers is also
12