Biography

Giuseppe Ghislandi, called Fra Vittore Galgario, was an Italian portrait painter, active mainly in Bergamo, who was trained in Venice and whose portraits reflect the best qualities of Late Baroque Venetian painting in their solid handling and strong but subdued colour. His sitters are usually simple people and he represents them in informal poses, often with a strength of light and shade indicating a knowledge of Rembrandt. He has lately been connected with Realist tendency in Lombard painting of the early 18th century, but the closest parallels among his contemporaries seem to be Hogarth's portraits, although his best-known work, the Boy Painter (Bergamo), in some ways anticipates Greuze.