A Man in a Red Cap
- Date
- 4th quarter of the 17th c.
- Object type
- painting
- Technique
- oil
- Material
- wood
- Dimensions
- 38,9 x 30,4 cm
- Acquisition date
- 1774
- Location
- The Palace on the Isle - Hallway, 1st floor
- Marks and inscriptions
- inscribed G Flin… / 1639, on left, at chest height
- Place of Origin
- Netherlands (Europe)
- Owner
- The Royal Łazienki
- Museum number
- ŁKr 845
The painting is listed as being the work of Govert Flinck in three undated documents (one handwritten by Stanisław August), most probably from 1774, preserved in the Czartoryski Library, in which several paintings are offered for sale to the King. … In the 1967 catalogue of the National Museum in Warsaw it was published as an autograph replica of a painting by Flinck in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden … .
According to Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke … , as well as Werner Sumowski … the Łazienki painting is not an autograph work, but a copy. The scholars also mention two other painted repetitions of the Dresden original: a copy of the head in the Östergotlands Museum in Linköping … and an autograph replica or a copy … , recorded in 1955 on the art market in London … .
A copy of A Man in a Red Cap, unpublished to date, can also be found in the Jerzy Dunin-Borkowski Museum in Krośniewice … . The painting was acquired by the founder of the collection (d. 1992) as a work by Rembrandt; according to tradition it came from the Stanisław August collection, and it was purportedly bought from his heirs (?) by the Warsaw banker, Józef Rawicz (1829–1901). It is probably an 18th-century copy made after the Łazienki painting, possibly at the behest of Stanisław August—although it was not listed in the catalogues of his collection. The archival sources mention several repetitions of the paintings from the king’s collection, executed in particular by Mateusz Tokarski, assistant to Marcello Bacciarelli, most probably for Stanisław August’s relatives and friends, and sometimes for the king himself … —although we have not found any record concerning the representation under discussion. [See D. Juszczak, H. Małachowicz, The Stanisław August Collection of Paintings at the Royal Łazienki. Catalogue, Royal Łazienki Museum, Warsaw 2016, no. 47, p. 192.]