Portrait of a Man: Francesco Albani ? 1599 - 1661

Andrea Sacchi made this red and black chalk drawing, Portrait of a Man: Francesco Albani?, sometime in the first half of the 17th century. It's important to note that the work may be a portrait of another artist, Francesco Albani, and as such speaks to the important role of the academy in the careers of artists in Sacchi’s Rome. Artists like Sacchi and Albani were keen to promote a new, more classicizing style, turning away from the ornate excesses of the late-Mannerist style. They achieved positions of power in the Roman art world, defining and policing what "good art" was, through their work as teachers, and through their writing. This portrait is of an artist, by an artist, likely for an artistic, academic context. The historian's work is to uncover these layers of institutional and social context, making use of archival sources to better understand the work and the artist's intention. Art, after all, is always contingent on the culture that produced it.