Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Giuseppe Ghislandi (known as Fra' Galgario)

Portrait of a Goldsmith

ca. 1735 - 1743
Oil on canvas.
73 x 57 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
160
(
1976.64
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Ghislandi is one of the finest late Baroque portraitists. He trained with two local Bergamo painters, first with Giacomo Cotta then with Bartolomeo Bianchini, before leaving for Venice. There he took religious orders and entered the monastery of San Francesco di Paola. After a period in Bergamo, in 1688 he is again recorded in Venice and it was at this point that he met Sebastiano Bombelli, in whose studio he worked between around 1689 and the start of the next century, at which point he returned to Bergamo. He entered the Galgario monastery, from which he took his religious name of Fra’ Galgario. The manner in which Ghislandi presents his sitters reflects the influence of the great portraitist from Bergamo, Giovanni Battista Moroni. He also looked to 16th-century Venetian painting, which he could have studied at first-hand, with regard to his use of colour.

Ghislandi’s portraits are marked by their simple presentation of the sitter against plain, dark backgrounds in which the figure is generally presented half-length or bust-length, sometimes in an oval format. Difficult to date precisely, his portraits depict members of the Bergamo nobility, particularly the Rota and Secco Suardo families who were his patrons, as well as young artists, aristocrats, and children and young boys from more humble sectors of society. Ghislandi captured his models in a natural, realistic manner, also paying attention to their characters and personalities, which he reflected through the sitters’ expressions and particularly their gestures.

The present canvas, which was known from the time it was included in an exhibition on 17th-century portraiture held in Milan in 1910, was recorded in three private collections before it entered the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in 1976. It was in the collection of Giuseppe Beltrami in Milan, then in the 1960s in that of Pino Gavazzeni in Bergamo. It was then owned by the Marquis dal Pozzo in Milan prior to its acquisition for the Collection housed at the Villa Favorita.

The ring that the sitter is holding and the striking jewel in his hat has led the present portrait to be described as that of a jeweller, although with no other argument to support this identification. It has been dated to Ghislandi’s last period. The artist focuses all his attention on the sitter, who looks out with a penetrating gaze and who is painted with a narrow colour range only broken by the red of his cap and of the stone in the ring. The large, striking jewel in the sitter’s hat is to be found in other male portraits by Ghislandi, albeit with a slightly different design. They include Man in Dalmatian Dress in a private collection, which is one of Ghislandi’s masterpieces and in which the jewel has a feather attached to it. In a portrait in a private collection in Milan, the model, who wears rich, striking red and blue clothes, also has a sophisticated brooch in his hat. Contini detected a physical resemblance between this sitter and the one in Portrait of the Noblewoman Bonduri Marenzi in a private collection in Bergamo.

Mar Borobia

18th Century17th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
Listen
Download image Print page

Products and publications

De Palacio Villahermosa a Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Historia de un edificio

De Palacio Villahermosa a Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Historia de un edificio

28.00 € 15.50 €

Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

80.00 € 25.00 €

Delaunay, Sonia

Delaunay, Sonia

17.00 €

Poster Vincent van Gogh: Les Vessenots in Auvers

Poster Vincent van Gogh: Les Vessenots in Auvers

12.50 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

Workshop Of Mattia Preti
Workshop Of Mattia Preti
The Martyrdom of Saint Januarius
ca. 1685
Luca Giordano
Luca Giordano
The Judgement of Solomon
ca. 1665
Carlo Dolci
Carlo Dolci
The Infant Christ with a Floral Wreath
1663
Giulio Carpioni
Giulio Carpioni
Bacchanal
1660 - 1665
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
Portrait of a Goldsmith. Retrato de un orfebre, c. 1735-1743
Portrait of a Goldsmith
Giuseppe Ghislandi (known as Fra' Galgario)

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and other non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use:

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified, or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación. In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images authorized by the Fundación must be accompanied by the following mention: Author's name. Title, Date © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
  • The user will send to the Museum Photo Library of the Fundación one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotográfico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
Portrait of a Goldsmith. Retrato de un orfebre, c. 1735-1743
Portrait of a Goldsmith
Giuseppe Ghislandi (known as Fra' Galgario)

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Terms of Use

The Photographic Archive of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works on its Permanent Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialized publications, you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

However, photographed works are protected by copyright. Therefore, regardless of the terms of use of the photographs set out below by the Foundation, it will be necessary to obtain a license from the author or copyright holder known to the Fundacion in order to reproduce or exploit the work.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022