An Italian Collector in his Study
Venceslao Verlin (Wenceslaus Wehrlin) (1740 - Florence 1780)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1768 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on panel
Measurements
350 x 420 x 47 mm
Order this imageCollection
Wimpole, Cambridgeshire
NT 207799
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, An Italian Collector in his Study by Venceslao Verlin (Wenceslaus Wehrlin) (1740 - Florence 1780), signed under harpsichord Wincesl. Wehrlin F./1768. An Italian collector dressed in a loose embroidered 'banyan' gown and turban, seated in his study, before a harpsichord, holding in his right hand a manuscript or letter. A pet parrot perches on the armchair beside his right shoulder. Atop the harpsichord are bronzes (The Capitoline Faun, after the antique, and a Greeting Cupid, perhaps Roman), engravings, a chinoiserie figure adapted into a candlestick, and artistic and scientific instruments. A putto, seated at bottom right, blows bubbles beside several objects emblematic of human vanity. Engravings after Watteau's L'embarquement pour Cythère (1718, engraved Tardieu, 1733) and La Mariée de Village (engraved Cochin, 1729) are mounted on the wall. Within a gilt frame. The artist was one of three artists sons of a Nuremberg painter-restorer Johann Adams Wehrlin (d. 1776), who made a career at the court of Turin after accompanying the former collection of Prince Eugen there in 1741, folowing its sale to King Carlo Emanuel III by Eugen's niece, Princess Victoria of Saxony-Hildenburghaisen. Wenceslaus was himself appointed Court Portrait Painter seven months before his father's death in May 1776. This is earlier than his first recorded work: Self-portrait holding a miniature of the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany, of 1771, in the Uffizi, Florence.
Provenance
Bequeathed by Elsie Kipling, Mrs George Bambridge (1896 - 1976), daughter of Rudyard Kipling, to the National Trust together with Wimpole Hall, all its contents and an estate of 3,000 acres
Credit line
Wimpole Hall, The Bambridge Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Venceslao Verlin (Wenceslaus Wehrlin) (1740 - Florence 1780)
Exhibition history
Treasured Possessions from The Renaissance to the Enlightenment, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2015, no.173
References
Avery, Calaresu and Laven 2015: Victoria Avery, Melissa Calaresu and Mary Laven (ed.), Treasured Possessions: from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 24 March to 6 September 2015, Cat. 173, Fig. 1, pp.2
