Portrait of Count Flaminio Tassi (?), 1720-1725

Fra’ Galgario, a man of sharp insight, portrayed aristocrats, merchants, clerics, civil servants and military men with realism, delving deep into his sitters’ souls yet without ever judging them. The dull, greygreen of the coat and the lacquers, which he prepared himself, are typical of his work. He had his sitters pose for him, but he would also use a wooden dummy with real clothes and accoutrements. The sitter may be an ancestor of Fra’ Galgario’s biographer Francesco Maria Tassi.