GIOVANNI BAGLIONE (attr. to) (Rome, c. 1566/1568 - 1643) Portrait of a Man Oil on canvas, 75.2X63 cm Provenance: Rome, private collection (with attribution to Guercino) Bibliography: Y. Primarosa, The Brush, the Pen and the Sword. Relations and Ambitions of Orazio Borgianni in Early 17th-Century Rome, in Orazio Borgianni. Un genio inquieto nella Roma di Caravaggio, exhibition catalogue edited by G. Papi, Milan 2020, pp. 55-69, fig. 11 (as here attributed to Giovanni Baglione) Duly traced back to Giovanni Baglione's catalogue by Yuri Primarosa, the canvas is therefore an interesting testimony of Caravaggio's portraiture. The scholar, investigating the pictorial and biographical aspects of Orazio Borgianni, observes how the filamentous and vibrant impasti that characterise the artist's works influenced Baglione's mature ductus and that this pictorial conditioning is perceived in the 'powerful' portrait under examination, which would be dated around 1635. The effigy, highly effective in its expression, probably constitutes a private homage to a personage close to the artist, but it could also be an evocative self-portrait in which Baglione 'changed his portrait formula for the last time in the light of the more modern proposals of Cortona and Bernini, thus bringing his Caravaggesque heritage up to date with the new course of Roman painting'. But beyond the identity of the effigy, one must take note of the undeniable expressive and 'speaking' height of this canine face, heroic and familiar at the same time.