Per Carlo Maratta ritrattista: un riesame del ritratto di Alderano Cybo

The main aim of this essay is to clear the ground concerning the current dating of one of Maratta’s portrait masterpieces to the 1650s and remove the realisation of the work to the end of the 1680s, during the period in which a close friendship developed between the artist and cardinal Cybo. We stress the analysis of the painting from the point of view of the self-representation of the patron (as Secretary of State, devotee of the Immaculate Conception, patron) and in a formal perspective. We stress the distance separating the painting, nowadays conserved at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Marseilles, from the leading tendencies in contemporary portraiture. Probably, behind the singularity of Maratta’s canvas we should see the influence of a model from many decades before, the Ritratto di Bernardino Spada by Guercino, an author who was particularly admired by cardinal Cybo.