Antonio Domenico Gabbiani

(Firenze, 1652 - 1726)

"  [...] It is clearly a Florentine painting easily attributable, due to its stylistic features and pictorial culture, to Anton Domenico Gabbiani, a painter loved by Grand Prince Ferdinand, and sought after by the most refined Florentine admirers of his era such as the Marquis Pier Antonio Gerini, Filippo Corsini, the Marquis Ridolfi, Giovan Battista Guadagni, all well-known collectors of the time. He was protected in particular by the Marquis Riccardi and Giovanni Vincenzo Salviati. The style traits reveal the Gabbiani's pictorial training took place initially in the workshop of Gantagallina and Suttermann, from whom he certainly learned his proven ability in portraiture, training which was completed in the three years spent with Vincenzo Dandini and in the following three years spent in Rome with Ciro Ferri. [...] As regards its dating, we think that it can be placed around 1700 due to the evident stylistic relationships with the frescoes painted by Gabbiani in one of the rooms overlooking the Lungarno of Palazzo Corsini, in Florence, where the painter depicted the Apotheosis of Hercules. [...] In particular, the putto playing the clarion is completely similar to the Satyr placed on the far right of those looking at our painting."

Critical sheet by Giuseppe Cantelli.