Blanton Museum of Art: The University of Texas at Austin

Bernardo Strozzi
Portrait of a Man, circa 1622-1623

Oil on canvas
60.2 cm x 48.8 cm (23 11/16 in. x 19 3/16 in.)
The Suida-Manning Collection

The most important native artist in Genoa during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, Bernardo Strozzi was also one of the great pure painters of the Baroque. Of late-Mannerist formation, Strozzi tended toward rhythmic complication, exaggerated stylization, and audacious brushwork. Over the course of the second decade-and after a period as a Capuchin monk-he managed to integrate the narrative immediacy and dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggism. Later, he incorporated the dynamic form and mobile light of the great Flemish artists Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, who were active in Genoa. Finally, moving to Venice around 1630-ostensibly to avoid being recloistered-Strozzi would adjust again toward the grand compositions and warm palette of that school. In his last decade in Genoa, Strozzi became a portraitist of the first order. Van Dyck, resident in the city in 1620 and 1621 and again in 1626 and 1627, produced innumerable portraits of members of the city's leading families. These clearly inspired Strozzi's efforts and determined their format, palette, and finish. At the same time, his individualism continued to assert itself in completely personal passages of paint-here, the fluid touch in the collar, and the daubed patches in the hair and left contour-and the suggestion of a subtle psychology. Restrained yet virtuoso, assertive yet sensitive, Strozzi's portraits are among the greatest of the period.