Portrait of a young Man

PROVENANCE
F. Abbott (Lugt 970)
Sale, London, Christie's, 26 June 1963, lot 228, illus. (bt. Maggs)
Sale, London, Sotheby's, 2 July 1984, lot 13, illus.
Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, 1988
Private collection, Boston

Although his fashionable attire asserts his wealth and status, the identity of the sitter in this fine portrait is unknown. Leoni, who was also a painter and printmaker, is chiefly known for the highly finished portrait drawings which he made of his contemporaries in Rome, including members of the aristocracy,  fellow artists, writers, scientists and ecclesiastics.  They are typically executed, like the present sheet, in black, red and white chalk on blue paper.

Leoni's successful career spanned the first three decades of the seventeenth century and was enthusiastically chronicled by the contemporary biographer, Baglione: "In all Rome there was no one who had not had his portrait by Ottavio - whether prince, princess, gentlemen, or persons of private rank...."  

The artist kept a large number of his portrait drawings in his studio, and from early in 1615 began the practice of dating the sheets and numbering them sequentially, the highest number in the series being 435.  The absence of such a number on this drawing may indicate that it was made prior to that date. 

His most important patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, began to amass Leoni's work, both paintings and drawings, from around 1607.  After the artist's death in 1630, Cardinal Borghese moved swiftly to purchase the bulk of his studio from Leoni's heir and stepson, Hippolito, striking the deal within six days of his demise for the enormous sum of 500 scudi.  Cardinal Borghese's collection of Leoni's drawings numbered approximately 400 sheets, which were seen and recorded by writers and travellers until they were sold in the mid-eighteenth century.