CARAVAGGESQUE PAINTER ACTIVE IN ROME IN THE 18TH CENTURY Portrait of a Young Man with Flute and Laurel Wreath Oil on canvas, 107X82.5 cm The painting depicts a young man with a flute and laurel wreath alluding to wisdom and the arts. The style characteristics suggest a date to the third decade, connoting a Roman-trained painter belonging to the second Caravaggesque generation. At first glance, the precedents could be identified in the creations of Tommaso Salini (Rome, c. 1575 ; 1625) and his epigones now subdivided under different names and personalities, such as the Master of Baranello, the Master of the Armenti and the Lampronti Flagellation. However, there is a clear Manfredian influence with an expressive and painterly modulation that could evoke the creations of the Master of Baranello, but even more so the Roman works of Nicola Tournier due to the allusive reference to the Renaissance tradition, the peculiar profile of the young man and the features of his lips, not to mention the drapery, constructed with long, confident brushstrokes. These clues consequently lead us to exclude the name of the Master of the herdsmen, whose activity stretches beyond the middle of the century (cf. G. Papi, Alcune riferimento cronologico per il Maestro degli armenti, in G. Papi, Un misto di grano e di pula. Scritti su Caravaggio e l'ambiente caravaggesco, Naples 2020, pp. 254-265), again centring a chronological collocation on the third decade and a purely Manfredi genesis. Having said this, the philological and attributional difficulties posed by these creations, despite their manifest quality, are therefore evident; difficulties that Giulio Mancini had already pointed out when, in his stubborn desire to classify the artists active in the Eternal City, he almost seems to give up, observing that there were many, almost all of them, very young and that 'they come and go and cannot be regulated' (cf. G. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1614-1630, I, p. 97). Nonetheless, we can classify our author among those who embraced the Manfrediana Methodus, indeed, we can assert that he gravitated in the narrow circle envisaged here and that he is of French origin. One must then reflect on the allegorical significance of these representations alluding to the senses, here impersonated by the flute pertaining to hearing and consequently to the touch necessary for its use, just as smell is evoked by the laurel, while sight is rendered loquacious by the gaze. But it is even more pertinent to recognise the young man as Apollo god of harmony, whose pose and drapery again lead us back to Tournier's models, reminding us, for example, of the Flute Player in the Tosio Martinengo, while the androgyny appeals to the Agar of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, whose cut of the eyes returns in the Lute Player belonging to the Berry Museum, whose dating within 1626-1627 again confirms the chronological order and attribution to the French master. Reference bibliography: Nicolas Tournier 1590-1639. Un peintre caravagesque, exhibition catalogue edited by A. Hémery, Toulouse 2001, ad vocem G. Papi, Tournier e le sue relazioni con l'ambiente artistico romano, in Nicolas Tournier et la peinture caravagesque en Italie, en France et en Espagne, proceedings of the conference (Toulouse, 7-9 June 2001) edited by P. F. Bertrand and S. Trouvé, Toulouse 2003, pp. 103-114 G. Papi, Il Maestro della Flagellazione Lampronti, in G. Papi, Entro l'aria bruna d'una camera rinchiusa. Scritti su Caravaggio e l'ambiente caravaggesco, Naples 2016, pp. 211-227 G. Papi, Un San Gerolamo e un Sant'Andrea di Nicolas Tournier e ancora qualche riflessione sull'influenza di Ribera, in Entro l'aria bruna d'una camera rinchiusa. Scritti su Caravaggio e l'ambiente caravaggesco, Naples 2016, pp. 182-189 T. Borgogelli, Il San Girolamo di Madignano di Bartolomeo Manfredi e qualche novità caravaggesca: da Nicolas Tournier al Maestro delle bocche aperte, in Bartolomeo Manfredi tra conferme e nuove attribuzioni, Atti della giornata di studio (Ostiano, 14 November 2022), edited by G. Merlo, Ost.