Bernardo Strozzi
Genoa, 1581-Venice, 1644
Portrait of a Man, ca. 1622-23
Oil on canvas.
Strozzi was one of the great pure painters of the Baroque. In his last decade in Genoa, he also became a portraitist of the first order. Inspired by the refined and elegant portraits of the Genoese aristocracy produced by the Flemish master Anthony van Dyck, Strozzi fashioned his format, palette, and finish in his style. At the same time, he expressed his individualism in completely personal passages of paint – here, the fluid touch in the collar, the daubed patches in the hair and the left side of the face – and in the suggestion of the sitter’s inner psychology. Restrained and virtuoso, dignified and sensitive, Strozzi’s portraits are among the greatest of the Baroque period.