Giovanni Battista Caselli, Poet from Cremona
1557 - 1558.On display elsewhere
The identification of this elderly gentleman sitting at a desk in his study is borne out by the inscription on the fore edge of the book he is writing in, which displays the words "rime del casellio". Giovanni Battista Caselli was a poet and medal engraver who enjoyed certain prominence in Cremona during his lifetime, though there is little reliable information about him today. Nevertheless, Caselli’s social significance in the mid-sixteenth century would explain why his portrait was included in the gallery of distinguished men decorating the cubicolo (bedroom) of the home of the canon Pietro Antonio Lanzoni, il Tolentino. As was customary in the period, the picture gallery featured likenesses of emperors, philosophers, orators, and poets, and also included prominent people of contemporary Cremona, members of artistic and literary circles which canon Lanzoni likewise frequented. Sofonisba and her sister Lucia Anguissola (c. 1537-c. 1565) were involved in the project. Both young women were celebrities in the city: their family background, sex, and excellent portraiture skills earned them a reputation locally. Lucia was commissioned to execute the no longer extant portrait of the poet and military architect Benedetto Ala. Sofonisba was entrusted with this picture of Caselli, which was painted shortly before she left for the Spanish court and attests to the degree of artistic maturity she had attained by then.
The composition, structure, colouring, and even the dimensions and format are similar to those of the portrait of An Old Man (Stamford, The Burghley House Collection, PIC 323). Sofonisba painted around the same time. Both works show the subject seated in his study, a setting whose only spatial reference is the writing desk draped with a patterned Anatolian rug of the type known as "Holbein" or "Lotto" carpet. Indeed, both likenesses display parallels with Venetian and Lombard models, especially a few works by Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480-1556/57), such as the Portrait of a Dominican Friar (possibly Marcantonio Luciani) in the Musei Civici in Treviso, signed by Lotto in 1526.
Sofonisba demonstrates she is a keenly observant painter capable of describing details such as the books and Caselli’s hands and head with subtle realism. The execution is based on meticulous drawing and precise, neat dabs of paint that define the sitter’s facial features and, above all, convey his psychological depth. The poet’s intense but constrained expression indicates that Sofonisba used the models of her master Bernardino Campi (1522-1591) but improved on them. Comparison with the portrait of Castellano Cotta in the Museo Civico in Cremona, executed by Campi around 1542, reveals the connection and also the qualitative leap achieved by Sofonisba, who possessed an astounding ability to engage the spectator with the sitter.
The poet looks up from his work -writing praise for the Virgin- and points with his left hand to the small picture of the Virgin and Child with the infant Saint John hanging on the background wall. The text is written in Italian in elegant humanist miniscule. On top of the other books piled on the table is a small armillary sphere that was concealed by a portable crucifix until the canvas was cleaned in 2011. This overpaint, which must have been applied after the contents of Tolentino’s gallery were dispersed at an unknown date, extended to the table covering and the clothing worn by Caselli, who, as revealed by X-radiography, originally sported a shirt and a dressing-gown, a comfortable garment worn around the house. The gown was painted over with a brown coarse woollen cloak and Caselli thus became Saint Peter the Apostle. This is how he is identified in the inventories of the Marquis of Leganés, who must have acquired the painting during his stint as governor of Milan from 1635 to 1641. The attribution to Sofonisba was maintained in these inventories: "Saint Peter writing and a Virgin with the Son and Saint John, by the hand of a Genoese woman who was lady-in-waiting to the Infanta Doña Isabel, three palms high and two thirds of a vara wide, the lady [being] Sofonisba". The Leganés Collection later passed to that of the Count of Altamira (1753), where it was allocated number 377 (visible at the lower edge of the canvas), and in 1856 it appeared in the collection of José de Madrazo.
Ruiz Gómez, Leticia, 'Sofonisba Anguissola. Giovanni Battista Caselli, poeta de Cremona' En:. Historia de dos pintoras: Sofonisba Anguissola y Lavinia Fontana, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2019, p.127 nº.19
