Bernardo Pasquini and his portraits: from their origins to the present

The fame which Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710) enjoyed during his life seems to influence production of a number of his portraits. The best known is the one painted by Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709), preserved today at the Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini in Florence. Further, there is a late seventeenth-century bronze medal attributed to Cosimo Citerni. On the obverse side is shown Pasquini in profile, facing right, in gentleman’s attire, with what appears to be a cloak over his jacket; on the reverse, he is depicted in a domestic setting. In the volume Iscrizioni che si trovano negli atti dell’Accademia Colombaria di Firenze (1801) by Lorenzo Contini it is reproduced another medal, clearly inspired by the previous one, inscribed with the year 1723. It is possible that the nephews of Pasquini, or some of his students, had taken the initiative to cast a new commemorative medal, which used the one coined from the life as a model. At the Charlottenburg palace near Berlin is preserved another portrait painted in oil, attributable to Francesco Trevisani (1656–1746). It is displayed with those of three other famous composers from the time: Arcangelo Corelli, Giovanni Bononcini, and Attilio Ariosti. The last image of Pasquini is a marble bust realized three years after the composer’s death at the request of his nephew Felice Bernardo Ricordati and his pupil Tommaso Bernardo Gaffi, by Pietro Papaleo (active ca. 1694–1716), which was placed on in his funeral monument at the San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome.