Portrait of Francesco Andreini

The man in this portrait was one of the most famous actors of his age. Francesco Andreini, who died in 1624, led the Gelosi, a celebrated troupe of commedia dell'arte players, and made his name in the role of Capitano Spavento, a swaggering, cowardly soldier who boasted of impossible victories. Offstage he was a writer, and his wife Isabella Andreini was herself a star of the same company. The picture is a 17th-century copy after a portrait by Domenico Fetti, whose original is now in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The sitter's identity was not always known; a Fetti scholar, Eduard Safarik, proposed the actor's name in 1990, and the painting had earlier gone by other titles. What survives here is a steady, serious face, a long way from the blustering captain he played for the crowds.