Portrait of a gentleman in a dressing gown

Étienne Parrocel

Date: 1751

Medium: Inscribed on the reverse “DIPINTO IN ROMA / DA STEFANO PARROCEL / 1751”, Oil on canvas

Framed: 97.5 × 73 cm

Étienne Parrocel belonged to the celebrated Parrocel dynasty, a family of painters from Provence that was active across several generations between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Born in Avignon in 1696, he trained within the family workshop before leaving France for Italy as a young man. He settled permanently in Rome, where he spent virtually his entire career and where he died in 1775. So complete was his identification with the city that he became known as "le Romain", which distinguished him from the other members of his family. In Rome he Italianised his name to Stefano, as the inscription on the reverse of the present canvas attests. He became a member of the Accademia di San Luca and worked for Roman patrons and for the city's French community, producing altarpieces, history paintings, and portraits.

Parrocel's Roman career unfolded in a period of extraordinary cosmopolitan vitality. By the middle of the eighteenth century Rome was the undisputed capital of the European art world, the destination of the Grand Tour and a meeting point for artists of every nationality. Painters such as Pierre Subleyras, Marco Benefial, and Pompeo Batoni were redefining the genre of portraiture. Parrocel absorbed the lessons of this environment, combining the elegance and colouristic refinement of his French training with the solidity of form and sober naturalism of the Roman tradition.

The present portrait is a particularly fine example of this synthesis. The sitter is shown at three-quarter length against a warm, neutral brown ground. He wears a powdered wig and a sumptuous dressing gown of green striped silk lined with deep blue, loosely open over a white shirt with lace cuffs. The dressing gown was a highly fashionable garment in eighteenth-century Europe, and portraits of sitters in informal attire of this kind carried precise connotations. The garment was associated with the private sphere of study, leisure, and conversation, and it came to signify the cultivated man of letters, the scholar, or the connoisseur, free from the constraints of official representation.

Parrocel exploits the pictorial possibilities of the garment with evident virtuosity. The shimmering stripes of the silk, the play of light across the folds, and the vivid blue of the lining are rendered with a fluid and confident brush. They stand in contrast to the restrained palette of the background. The pose is equally eloquent. With one hand resting on his hip and the other pointing towards himself, the sitter engages the viewer directly, his gaze steady and his expression alert. The gesture lends the portrait an immediacy and a sense of self-presentation that set it apart from more conventional formal portraits of the period.

The inscription on the reverse, "DIPINTO IN ROMA / DA STEFANO PARROCEL / 1751", firmly documents both the authorship and the Roman execution of the work, placing it in the artist's full maturity. Portraits are comparatively rare within Parrocel's oeuvre, which is dominated by religious and history subjects. The present canvas is therefore a significant testimony to his gifts as a portraitist. Its importance was recognised by its inclusion in the exhibition Il Settecento a Roma, held at Palazzo Venezia in 2005–2006.

Provenance

Galleria W. Apolloni, Rome (until 1993);
Private collection, Rome.

Literature

G. Sestieri, Repertorio della pittura romana della fine del Seicento e del Settecento, Turin, 1994, v. III, n. 852;
A. Imbellone, Il Settecento a Roma, exhibition catalogue, Cinisello Balsamo, 2005, n. 151, pp. 254-255.
I. Pascale, Les Cahiers d'Histoire de l'Art, 2015, pp. 20-26

Exhibited

Rome, Palazzo Venezia, Il Settecento a Roma, 10 November 2005 – 26 February 2006