Portrait of cardinal Marco Galli

Marco Galli was made a cardinal in 1681 and died two years later, in 1683, so any portrait of him in his red robes belongs to a narrow window at the end of his life. He had been bishop of Rimini on the Adriatic coast for over twenty years before the promotion. The painter, Giovanni Battista Gaulli, was a Genoese who spent his career in Rome and was known to everyone there as Baciccio. His fame rested on enormous ceiling work, above all the dizzying painted vault of the church of the Gesu, where saints and sinners seem to spill down out of the sky. Portraits were the quieter side of the same hand. He painted a string of popes and cardinals, and comparatively few of those survive. This one keeps the props to a minimum, the biretta and the short shoulder cape of the office, and gives most of its attention to an aging, thoughtful face.