Sebastiano Ricci (Belluno 1659-1734 Venice)

Ricci employed a favorite model to pose for Pan: his bald head and coarse, rustic features reappear in a number of Ricci's paintings from the middle of the 1720s, including The Patience of Job, a painting documented to 1725 and recorded by Daniels in the Medioli-Masotti Collection (J. Daniels, Sebastiano Ricci, 1976, no. 330, p. 95, fig. 227), and a drawing - very close to the present painting - in Windsor Castle (ibid., fig. 229).