Portrait of an Adolescent Boy

Ottavio Leoni was a prolific, sensitive portraitist in 17th-century Rome, executing portrait drawings from life and etchings of the city's aristocrats, clerics, and artists. His preferred medium was à trois crayons, combining black, red, and white chalk, often on blue paper, here faded, and he has additionally incorporated brown chalk in the long locks of the teenage sitter. The inscriptions indicate that the present portrait was executed in July (luglio) of 1621--the year mostly cropped at lower edge, but confirmed by the artist's numbering system (see number 195). Scholar and collector Alfred Moir (2000) observed that the sitter's complacent expression, starched collar, and tailored doublet characterize him as prosperous and probably of a privileged class. Moir suggested his plump face has a familial resemblance with Paolo Giordano II Orsini, duke of Bracciano (1591–1656), a flamboyant figure in Rome whom Leoni represented in at least four surviving portrait drawings as well as a number of etchings. The sitter is too young to be Orsini and too old to be his son, but he might be Paolo Giordano II's younger brother and ultimate heir, Ferdinando Orsini (before 1606–1660), duke of Bracciano from 1656 to 1660.