LONG-LOST PORTRAIT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

LONG-LOST PORTRAIT

Disappeared For 300 Years

A recent gift to Porstmouth Cathedral has been identified as a long-lost portrait of Philip Benizi by Carlo Dolci. The picture, which shows him in the black habit of the Servites, renouncing the triple crown of a Pope, was mentioned shortly after Carlo Dolc-i’s death in 1686 in a brief memoir by his friend Filippo Baldinucci. but subsequently disappeared. Au announcement in the "Portsmouth Diocesan News” states that a photograph of the picture lias beeu submitted to two distinguished art historians, Mr. E. K. Waterhouse and Professor Tancred Borenlus, who have both unhesitatingly accepted it has an original by Dolci. The identification is confirmed by the discovery in the British Museum of a print referred to by Baldinucci reproducing the picture. The painting, which was executed for the Servile Father of the Santissiraa Annunziata, Florence, was purchased in Italy about the middle of the last century. Professor Borenlus told a reporter that the painting is tin important work. "We know from an old ‘life’ of Dolci.” he said, "that he bad painted a banner of Philip Benizi, their patron saint, for the Servites in Florence. Later it disappeared. It is interesting that this work, mentioned in Italian literature of the seventeenth century, should turn up in English private possession ”