Old Portrait Of The Seventeenth Century

Portrait of a former traveler possible attribution to ALMANACH Oil on panel - Dimensions 111 X 90 cm The genre pictorial scene clearly highlights the socio-economic difficulties of the 17th century peasant. Age and work are evident in the face of the woman depicted with extreme care, eyes full of sadness resigned and consumed by daily work for consummate survival. Even his clothes are plain and crumpled, typical of the peasant world. In the difficult economic conditions of the 17th century, many villagers embarked on a journey through CARNIOLA, a historical-geographical region located between eastern Friuli in the west, Carinthia in the north, Styria, Croatia and Istria to the east and south. These themes and the pictorial precision of the painting lead to placing the painting in the works of ALMANACH Almanach, an artist documented in Slovenia in 1689 and probably still active there in the early 18th century (Rozman, 1996), but whose relationships with contemporary genre production in Lombardy are evident. As mentioned, the works that have participated in this particular iconographic typology disseminate moral values, allegories of human age and erotic tropes, accentuated by excessive expressiveness that goes far beyond the rules of decorum. We know little about an unknown painter. Valvasor described him as "famous" three times in the eleventh book of Glory of the Duchy of Carniola in descriptions of pictorial equipment in the manors of Bokalce, Iški tower and in the refectory of the Franciscan monastery of Ljubljana, but only with the nickname Almanac. We read its presumed origin in the inventory of the churches of Ljubljana in the manuscript of Janez Gregor Dolničar Annales urbis Labacensis, in which he is mentioned as Belgian Almenaco, and in the biography of Wolf Sigmund Baron Stroblhof in the memorial book of the Brotherhood of Saints. Dizma, where it is referred to as the Allmenak of Antwerp, will be hosted by Stroblhof for many years. In the inventories of the Carniolian heritage, we find different forms of the nickname of the painter attributed to Almanach (allmenak, Allmanak, Almanach, Almenach, Almenak, Almenac, Almenack, Almenog). Among the reliable works of Almanac dating from the time of his work in Carniola, the current state of research includes only the paintings Kvartopirci I, Kvartopirci II and The Boy in Turkish (National Gallery, Ljubljana) and the drawings Castle of Bogenšperk, Ljubljana and The sitting peasant in the seventeenth volume of the graphic collection of Valvasor (Metropolitan knjižnica, Zagreb; VZ XVII, 85, 86, 229 b, comparative publication Vnderschidliche geistliche vnd weltliche Riß, vnd Zeichnungen […], Ljubljana , Zagreb, 2008). His famous preserved work is characterized by a distinct psychological characterization of representations, stylistic-typological diversity and a unique interpretation of the stylistic directions of Western Europe, in particular Dutch and Flemish. Kvartopirce I and II are characterized by echoes of Northern Caravaganism and The Boy in the Turk reveals typological, stylistic and iconographic similarities with the monumental Dutch-Flemish and North-Italian representations of the lower social classes.