Fra Galgario

Fra’ Galgario (4 March 1655 – December 1743), born Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, and also called Fra’ Vittore del Galgario, was an Italian painter, mainly active in Bergamo as a portraitist during the Rococo or late-Baroque period.

Young boy with apples

Biography

He was born in Bergamo to an artist father, Domenico Ghislandi. Initially, he entered the studio of Giacomo Cotta, then Bartolomeo Bianchi, and finally the studio of Sebastiano Bombelli in Venice in the 1690s. He also reported training with the German portrait artist Salomon Adler in Milan.

In 1702, he entered the religious life in the Order of the Minims of the Monastery of Galgario, in Bergamo. He assumed the name of the saint for whom the monastery is named. He was elected a member of the Milanese Accademia Clementina in 1717.

He is said to blend the attention to colourism and glamour that captivates Renaissance-Baroque portraiture of Venice, with the realism of Milanese art such as that of Moroni. Among his pupils were Paolo Bonomino, Cesare Femi, and Pietro Gualdi (18th century painter).

Works

• Giovane con bicchiere di vino e natura morta con pane e cipolla
• Giovane con turbante
• Ragazzo col cappello piumato (L’Allegrezza)

Portraits

• Count Giovanni Battista Vailetti
• Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
  • Portrait of Francesco Maria Bruntino
  • Portrait of Advocate Giacomo Battamni de'Bazni
  • Portrait of G. Secco Suardo
  • Portrait of Count Galeatius Secco Suardo (1681-1733)
  • Portrait of the Gentleman of Finardi's House (1710)
  • Gentlewoman (around 1710)
• Luigi Koelliker collection:
  • Portrait of Gian Domenico Tassi (between 1710–15)
• Portrait of Clara Benaglio Finardi (1710), private collection
• Giovanni Secco Suardo and Servant (1711) Giovanni Secco Suardo
• Gentleman
• Portrait of Count Giovan Battista Vailetti (1720), Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice

  

  Portrait of Count Giovan Battista Vailetti

• Portrait of a Young Girl, National Museum of Fine Arts, Algiers
• Portrait of Count Andra Asperti With His Son
• Portrait of Count Bartolomeo Secco Suardo in Arms
• Portrait of Count Filippo Marenzi
• Portrait of Count Gerolamo Secco Suardo
• Portrait of Count Giovan Battista Vailetti
• Portrait of Dottor Bernardi
• Portrait of Marquess Giuseppe Maria Rota and Captain Antonio Brinzago da Lodi
• Portrait of Marshal Matthias von der Schulenburg
• Portrait of Sculptor Andrea Fantoni
• Portrait of the Advocate Giacomo Bettami de' Bazini
• Portrait of Bartolomeo Manganoni
• Portrait of Bertrama Daina de' Valsecchi
• Portrait of Carlo Tinti
• Portrait of Domenico Ghislandi
• Portrait of Elizabeth Piavana Ghidotti
• Portrait of Young Sculptor, University of Arizona Art Museum, Tucson

Busts

• Bust of Vitellio Imperatore
• Bust of a Poet Laureate

References

• Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). "Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750". Pelican History of Art. 1980. Penguin Books Ltd. p. 493.
• short bio

External links

• Painters of reality: the legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Galgario (see index)