Vittore Ghislandi, called Fra Galgario, around 1700
Oil on canvas. At the bottom left of the inscription is inscribed "Josepha Marianna Monialis / Professa in Mon. S. Mariae / Magdalenae P. L. Filia Comitis / Joseph Mariae Arconati in Saeculo Rosa".
The portrait shows one of the four daughters of the Milanese art collector Count Giuseppe Maria Arconati. He commissioned the Bergamo artist Fra Galgario to create a series of portraits of his daughters for the Villa Arconati in Lombardy.
The imposing painting shows Contessa Rosa Arconati in fantastically reproduced, most magnificent, contemporary fashion, with a pinned-up curly hairstyle and pearl jewellery on her neck, wrists and hair.
In front of a curtain drapery overlooking a garden terrace, she is presented with a sheet of music on a musical instrument as an elegant and educated lady of the Milanese nobility. Only the inscription attached to the picture refers to her future as "Suor Gioseffa Marianna" in the monastery of Santa Maria Magdalena.
Ghislandi (Bergamo 1655-1743, ibid.) came from a Bergamo family of painters and lived in Venice from 1675. There he joined the Minorite Order as a lay brother. In 1702 he belonged to the monastery of Galgario in Bergamo, changing his name to Fra Vittorio or Fra Galgario.
After returning to Bergamo from Venice and Milan, Ghislandi perfected his skills and became one of the most sought-after portrait painters of the northern Italian nobility.
Height 207 cm, width 119 cm.
Thieme/Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. 13, pp. 566ff
