Estimate
€ 4.000 - 6.000
Sold
€ 8.970
The price includes buyer's premium
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Information
oil on canvas
100 x 75 cm
Cinzia Virno, April 2025
100 x 75 cm
The work is archived at the Antonio Mancini Archive with the code 95(8)1229AV.
Literature
C. Virno, Antonio Mancini - Catalogo ragionato dell’opera. I La pittura a olio su tela tavola, carta e specchio, Rome 2019, p. 317 n. 520.
The work is the portrait, until now lost, of Baron Giorgio Sonnino (1844 - 1921), senator of the kingdom from 1886 to 1921. The latter, an amateur painter, particularly appreciated Mancini's works and was his disciple and collector. The friendship between the two is documented from 1883, the year in which Mancini moved from Naples to Rome. In the capital, the baron introduced him to the salon of his brother-in-law Baron De Renzis where he also met Edoardo Scarfoglio and Matilde Serao. The portrait was painted in London during Mancini's first stay in England, between 1901 and 1902, when Sonnino was also present in the British capital. It is mentioned in an excerpt from a letter written by the painter to the latter, preserved in the Mancini Archives: «Dear Mr. Baron / I received your kind letter and I thank you for having chosen to exhibit at your Gallery the canvas of the portrait I painted of you in London...» (undated but before 1904).
On the perimeter of the recently restored painting, the attachment holes of the wire grid used by the artist to more faithfully reproduce the truth are visible.
The work, published as not found in the catalogue raisonné of Mancini's painting, will be inserted with the image in the next updates.
Cinzia Virno, April 2025
