Italian school; second third of the 18th century."Portrait of a gentleman.Oil on canvas. Re-drawn.Size: 126 x 101 cm; 138 x 112 cm (frame).This work portrays a gentleman dressed in the fashion of the middle of the 18th century: he wears a coat embroidered with gold thread, a matching embroidered waistcoat and a white muslin scarf, this last garment that replaced the previous black silk tie. Men's clothing of the period followed the English fashion, and was characterised above all by the combination of a jacket and silk waistcoat, short and finished with two points at the waist, an evolution of the earlier jacket. Another defining feature of the men's fashion of the period was the Ramillies wig, of English origin, named after the victory of Marlborough in 1706. It is characterised by curls over the ears and hair tied back in a tail with a black ribbon. Like other wigs of the period, both male and female, it is powdered with flour. The man is depicted half-length in front of a wooden chair upholstered in red, against a flat, neutral background. The figure is slightly turned, looking directly at the viewer, a position which again reinforces the construction of the depth of the space, while at the same time detracting from the hieratic nature of the representation and introducing a gentle movement into the figure. This spatial sensation is also generated by the table, where we can see an inkwell and the pen with which he has just written the letter he is holding in one of his hands.In the 18th century, European portraiture was varied and wide-ranging, with numerous influences and largely determined by the tastes of both the clientele and the painter himself. However, this century saw the birth of a new concept of portraiture that would evolve throughout the century and unify all the national schools: the desire to capture the personality and character of the human being, beyond his external reality and social rank, in his effigy. During the previous century, portraiture had become established among the upper classes and was no longer reserved solely for the court. For this reason, as the 17th and even more so in the 18th century, the formulas of the genre became more relaxed and moved away from the ostentatious and symbolic official representations typical of the Baroque apparatus. On the other hand, the 18th century reacted against the rigid etiquette of the previous century with a more human and individual conception of life, and this was reflected in all areas, from furniture, which became smaller and more comfortable, replacing the large gilded and carved pieces of furniture, to the portrait itself, which came to dispense, as we see here, with all symbolic or scenographic elements in order to depict the individual rather than the personage.