Carracci, Annibale (1560-1609)
Testa di giovane ridente (Head of a Laughing Youth)
c.1585
Oil on paper on canvas, 44.5 × 29.5 cm
Galleria Borghese, Roma
The painting, mentioned as ‘Buffoon laughing’, has been part of the Borghese collection since 1693 and portrays the face of a smiling young man, depicted with an unusual headdress similar to a turban, which fits well into the context of the portraits made by Annibale Carracci from 1582. Because the work is incomplete, made on paper later applied to canvas, it provides a glimpse of the drawing’s outlines, which have been filled in with fluid brushstrokes of dense paint.
This painting is documented as pertaining to the Borghese collection since 1693, generically listed in that year’s inventory as “Laughing Jester” (Della Pergola, 1964). This description was partially corrected in 1790, when the Head was attributed to Caravaggio, a reference which was then revised in the fideicommissum listing of 1833, which ascribed the work to Carracci.
We owe the identification of this oil on paper as an original by Annibale Carracci to Roberto Longhi, who ascribed this painting to the artist’s juvenile period, an opinion confirmed in 1955 by Paola della Pergola who thought the Head was more likely a quick sketch than an actual study by the Bolognese painter.
In 1956 Guido Cavalli placed the painting around 1583–84, a dating that was confirmed some years later by Donald Posner (1971), who saw several analogies with The Butcher’s Shop (Oxford, Christ Church Gallery) and The Bean Eater (Rome, Palazzo Colonna), produced by Carracci in those same years. Furthermore, Posner believed the Borghese Head could be connected both to a work with the same subject “supposed to be a Carracci,” mentioned in a 1677 inventory of the collection of Robert Harpus, a British gentleman residing in Rome (Burdon, 1960); and to a small oval painting “on painted paper glued upon canvas, depicting a laughing jester dressed in green, wearing a red cap with a white feather, by Carazzi’s hand” (Campori, 1879) described in 1698 in the Este palace in Modena.
In 2007 Daniele Benati confirmed the attribution to the Bolognese painter and suggested postponing the execution of the work to 1585, closer to the Pietà in Parma, “in which he draws nearer to Correggio, eliciting similarly refined lapses in form” (Benati, 2007). Antonio Iommelli (GB)