Portrait of Abbot Giovanni Felice Ramelli

For Giovanni Felice Ramelli, 1737 was a full year. He was a canon of the Lateran order, born in Asti in Piedmont, and one of the most admired miniature painters in Rome, where Pope Clement XI had made him keeper of the illuminated manuscripts of the Vatican Library. That year he gave King Charles Emmanuel III 68 of his miniatures, and the court fitted them into a small room of the royal palace in Turin that took his name. The palace, now part of the same Musei Reali as this gallery, still keeps miniatures from that gift in its Miniature Cabinet. Also in 1737, the Lateran canons of Asti, his own order in his home town, received a large Supper in the House of Simon for their refectory, painted by a young Frenchman in Rome, Pierre Subleyras. Ramelli is credited with steering that commission his way, and the canvas is now in the Louvre. The museum dates this portrait of the abbot to the following year. Its own notes single out the luminous white of his rochet and the still life on the small table beside him. Ramelli, for his part, is said to have copied the portrait as a miniature of his own.