The Servant of Pharaoh, Bernardo Strozzi

Episode 222 May-2010, Jarryd Page I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. An oil painting in the Spencer collection, dated around 1625, is attributed to the Italian Baroque painter Bernardo Strozzi. Measuring approximately 2 by 1 ½ feet and titled Servant of the Pharaoh, the painting depicts the head and shoulders of an aging Caucasian man. He turns to his left and gazes out beyond the edge of the frame, his strongly lit wrinkled face and red plumed cap leaping out against the black background. This small picture may be a fragment cut from a larger Strozzi composition of a Biblical subject, or it may be an example of a tronie-an old Dutch word for ‘head’ or ‘face’. Tronies became popular in Northern Europe in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Working in the bustling port city of Genoa during the first half of his career, Strozzi was exposed to numerous cultural traditions from abroad, and may have become familiar with tronies through the Flemish artists Peter Paul Rubens or Anthony van Dyck, both of whom spent time in Genoa in the early seventeenth century. With thanks to Jarryd Page for his text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.