The exquisite details in this portrait showcase Antonio Mancini’s supreme gift in drawing meaningful connections between the protagonists in his paintings and their surroundings. His brushwork is dazzling and - though descriptive - never dull, conjuring up the worlds in which his subjects live and breathe be they noblemen, artists or street characters.

Except for the refined setting in which this gentleman is portrayed, there are no other discernible clues to help identify him: there is no inscription on the reverse of the canvas or annotation in the Mancini archive, where a photograph of the portrait is filed (fig. 1).

In her recent catalogue raisonné of the works of Mancini, Cinzia Virno speculates whether the sitter might be a writer or a sculptor (owing to the presence of the little book and statuette).[1] Neither is entirely convincing, particularly since the inclusion of these objects seems decorative rather than emblematic. Virno tentatively proposes that the man might be the young Henry James, for whom Mancini painted two works (both now in a private collection).[2]

She also hypothesises whether the portrait might not be that mentioned in letters from Mancini to the Dutch painter Jean Jonas Jacobson, though that painting is not described in detail (we only know that it was full figure).[3]

A convincing case can be made, however, for the man portrayed being the American painter John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856–London, 1925), who not only associated with Mancini but whose resemblance to the elegantly dressed gentleman is indisputable when compared to numerous photographs in which Sargent appears around this time: see, for example, the photograph of the two-standing side by side on the Wertheimer estate, near Henley, in the summer of 1901 (fig. 2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 2.
Particolare di una fotografia che mostra Mancini e Sargent.

 

The close friendship between the two painters and their mutual respect for one another is well documented, and Sargent famously described Mancini as ‘the best living painter’ (Virno 2019, p. 23). Though it is not known precisely how or where they first met, Mancini regularly visited Paris in the 1870s and Sargent was said to be frequently at his side. In the summer of 1878 the American painter visited Campania, and by the mid-1880s Mancini was well ensconced in the circle of international collectors who had taken up residence in Italy, thanks to Daniel Sargent Curtis and his painter son Ralph Wormsley Curtis, both of whom were relations of Sargent.[4] On the occasion of Mancini taking part in the 1887 Esposizione Nazionale in Venice, for which John Singer Sargent presided as a member of the honorary committee, the two painters were invited by Curtis to dine at his home in Palazzo Barbaro; its interior beautifully depicted a decade or so later by Sargent (1899; Royal Academy of Arts, London).

Similarly, the well-connected American sculptor Thomas Waldo Story was a common friend: he commissioned Sargent to paint a portrait of his wife in 1883, around the same time that Story gave Mancini use of his studio on via San Martino della Battaglia in Rome. The most obvious testament to their friendship is, however, Sargent’s strikingly frank and expressive portrait of Mancini in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, which dates from 1901-2 (about the same time as the photograph in fig. 2).

Furthermore, Sargent was one of Mancini’s greatest promoters during the latter’s London stay between the summer of 1901 and autumn 1902; a stay that helped launch his international career. Indeed, it was Sargent who, together with the painter John Lavery (founder and vice-president of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters & Gravers), personally undertook the organisation of an exhibition of Mancini’s works in 1899. Sargent also incessantly promoted Mancini among his personal acquaintances. Claude Pensonby, who admired Mancini’s gifts as a portraitist and formally invited him to London in order to paint his family, was a friend of both Sargent and Curtis. A note in the diary of Charles Ricketts in 1902 details the extent of Sargent’s admiration for Mancini, criticising him for his incessant promotion of the Italian painter, which was frowned upon by those who did not share his passion for the portraitist.

For more on Sargent and Mancini’s friendship, see Manuel Carrera, ‘Antonio Mancini in Inghilterra. Il rapporto con John Singer Sargent’, in Storia dell’Arte, N. 133-2012, pp. 153-180), Cinzia Virno’s monograph (2019) and the catalogue accompanying a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Sargent: Portraits of Artist and Friends (2015).