Manner of Isaac van Ostade

Manner of on a museum label means a painting imitates a known artist without coming from his hand or his studio. This small panel of a barber's shop, a man being shaved amid the clutter of a working room, carries the signature JSAAC VAN OSTADE and the date 1686. Isaac van Ostade, a Haarlem painter of village and tavern scenes and the younger brother of Adriaen van Ostade, died in 1649, 37 years before that date. The signature is false.

Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese bought the panel as a genuine Ostade in January 1783, through the dealer Giovanni De Rossi, in a group that included seven Flemish works. Adolfo Venturi removed it from Ostade's work in 1893, and Paola Della Pergola, who catalogued the Borghese paintings, called it an 18th-century imitation, pointing to the busy trade in Northern pictures in Rome at the time, when forgers and dealers put many counterfeits on the market. It is now on deposit at Palazzo Chigi, the Italian prime minister's office, and is not on view at the gallery.