Scipione Pulzone, called Il Gaetano (Gaeta 1544-1598 Rome)

Francesco Petrucci has confirmed the attribution on the basis of photographs (private communication, 2011), suggesting that this canvas could have been a preparatory study for an official portrait of Pope Gregory XIII, such as Pulzone's three-quarter-length painting in a private collection, Rome (see F. Petrucci, I Volti del Potere: Ritratti di uomini illustri a Roma dall'Impero Romano al Neoclassicismo, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 2004, pp. 104-105, no. 24). The present painting is closely related to a portrait of the Pope that sold at Sotheby's, London, 12 December 1990, lot 25, as 'Lavinia Fontana'. Ugo Boncompagni (1502-1585), was elected Pope in 1572, and was the father of Jacopo Boncompagni, whose striking portrait by Pulzone will be offered in these rooms on 30 January 2013, in Renaissance (lot 129).