The Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli has recently acquired this portrait by Filippo Schor. The work was part of a series of four portraits of personalities from the Neapolitan operatic world commissioned by its viceroy, the IX Count of Santistebanbetween 1687 and 1696.
The sitter is an Italian architect, set designer and painter, born into a family of artists from the Tyrol. The family workshop worked primarily on the ornamentation of large Roman palaces. From 1677 until he was summoned to Madrid by Charles II two decades later, he served the ambassadors in Rome and the viceroys of Naples. Thus, in the service of the VII Marquis of Carpio, the IX Count of Santisteban and the IX Duke of MedinaceliHe was an entrepreneur, opera stage designer and designer of ephemeral apparatus.
When the collection was divided up at the end of the 19th century, this portrait corresponded to the first-born daughter of the 15th Duke and Duchess of Medinaceli, married to the Duke of Uceda, whose descendants became the Duke of Osuna, a collection in which it has remained to the present day.