Two Paintings from the Old Masters Collection at the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral in Rijeka, after the Works by Bernardo Strozzi

Abstract

This paper focuses on two paintings in the Old Masters Collection at the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral in Rijeka, which can be associated with the name of Bernardo Strozzi (Genoa, 1582 – Venice, 1644). The Head of a Bearded Man stands out for its quality and is almost identical to another work attributed to Strozzi, or his imitator, which has been offered at auctions of the prominent auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s during the past 15 years. The work sold in New York in 2010 most likely served as a workshop model, which is confirmed by the Rijeka painting, since unlike the original, it shows the old man’s cloak and his left hand in the lower part of the composition. Regardless of whether the auction version was cut off at some point or the Rijeka painting is, in fact, a patchwork of several studies by Strozzi, the high quality of the latter, its distinguished style and decisive brush strokes indicate that it was a quality work of the master’s workshop. The painting Saint James the Elder is a copy of Strozzi’s original that used to be part of a private collection in Milan and has recently been offered for sale at Christie’s auction house in New York. The author of the Rijeka painting is most likely a Lombard copyist from the 17th century. Although the provenance of Strozzi’s Saint James the Elder is unknown, the fact that the Rijeka copy, artistically relatively modest, shows the features of Lombard painting from the middle or second half of the 17th century indicates that this painting was probably privately owned in Lombardy soon after its creation, and has therefore remained completely unknown to the experts as well as the general public.