Portrait of monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi

Portrait of monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi is a 1604 oil on canvas painting now in York Art Gallery, to which it was presented via the National Art Collections Fund in 1955 by Francis Denis Lycett Green (1893–1959), a collector and younger brother of Sir Edward Arthur Lycett Green, 3rd Baronet.[1] Long attributed to Domenichino, it is now usually attributed to Annibale Carracci, though some art historians still support the old attribution based on archival discoveries[2] The Gallery accepts the new attribution,[3] though this is not yet reflected in its ArtUK entry.[4]

Domenichino, Portrait of cardinal Jean de Bonsi, 1616, Musée Fabre, Montpellier
Portrait of monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi (1604) attributed to Annibale Carracci

Its subject Giovanni Battista Agucchi was brother to cardinal Girolamo Agucchi and a major supporter of Carracci. It appears as "Monsignor Agucchi in a chimere holding a letter with both hands and looking at the viewers" in the list of prints after paintings by Annibale Carracci in Carlo Cesare Malvasia's 1678 Felsina Pittrice,[5] though other 17th-century sources attribute the painting to Domenichino. The attribution to Domenichino was held unanimously from the 19th century until 1994, when Silvia Ginzburg rediscovered the reference in Malvasia and found other documentary and stylistic evidence to support reattributing the work to Annibale.[6] Denis Mahon, Daniele Benati and Tomaso Montanari have all backed the reattribution. During a loan to the National Gallery, London the work was displayed with the new attribution.


References
  1. "Eloise Donnelly, Researching the Lycett Green Collection".
  2. Donatella Sparti, The Portrait of Agucchi at York, in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 139, 1997, p. 109.
  3. "Catalogue entry".
  4. "ArtUK entry".
  5. (in Italian) Daniele Benati, in Annibale Carracci, Catalogo della mostra Bologna e Roma 2006–2007, Milano, 2006, p. 392.
  6. Silvia Ginzburg, The Portrait of Agucchi at York Reconsidered, in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 136, 1994, pp. 4–14.
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