Portrait of a gentleman reading; signed on the lower right Ant.Brighenti di Clusone dip. and dated 1845. Antonio Brighenti (1810-1893) spent his entire career as a painter in his native Clusone (Bergamo), in contact with the rich artistic tradition of Bergamo. Trained under the direction of Giuseppe Diotti at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, where he was a fellow student of Piccio, Trécourt, Coghetti, etc., Brighenti was active in all the pictorial genres requested by the lively local clientele, including the ecclesiastical one, but it is in portraiture that he gave the best of his creative ability. The portraits of this painter offer us an extraordinary gallery of Bergamo characters around the mid-nineteenth century, of all social classes, simple and natural, never stereotyped, always captured with orobic realism, gentle irony, sincere psychological rendering. Oil on canvas of cm.74x65. Intact conservation conditions; only a slight cleaning and re-tensioning of the canvas is recommended. The painting is contained in a beautiful Carlo X style gorge frame, white lacquered and gilded on the edges, coeval.