A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

2127. PORTRAIT OF THE MARCHESE GIOVANNI BATTISTA CATTANEO.

Van Dyck (Flemish: 1599-1641). See 49.

It has been said in our notice of Van Dyck that many of his best works are to be seen in Genoa. Two of the portraits made during his "Genoese period" are now in our Gallery; having found their way to Paris and thence to England from the palace of the Marchese Cattaneo in Genoa, and having been bought by the Trustees from Messrs. Colnaghi. The price paid for the picture before us was £13,500. The portrait has not the pathetic charm of the "Gevartius" (52), to which it now forms a pendant; but in strength and vitality it is one of the painter's masterpieces. The Marchese lives before us, instinct with nervous energy; seeming, as has been well said, "at once to interrogate the spectator, and haughtily to repel interrogation."