The recent passage at a Sotheby's New York sale of a rare example of the portraiture of Antonio d'Enrico, known as Tanzio da Varallo, allows for a re-examination of the painter's early phase in the first decade of the Seicento in Rome and Naples. Documentary findings made known in the 2014 exhibition Tanzio da Varallo incontra Caravaggio. Pittura a Napoli nel primo Seicento are useful to this end. In fact the 'Portrait of a Gentleman' well illustrates Tanzio's Neapolitan period − on which Giovanni Previtali was the first to shed light − by a clear connection to Caravaggio in the 'Madonna of the Rosary', currently in Vienna. Further attention to Tanzio at Naples prompts new analysis of the chronology of several other paintings recently added to the corpus of Tanzio's work.
The restoration of a long-forgotten altarpiece in the collegiata of San Gaudenzio at Varallo, depicting 'Saint Nicholas, Saint Gregory, and Saint Pantaleone,' suggests, in the wake of key observations by Gianni Romano, a reassessment of the moment preceding Tanzio's departure for Rome in the jubilee year of 1600, for which no works are known. In fact, the restoration allows one to imagine possibilities for the artistic debut of the grand painter in patria, when he was still in part marked by Gaudenzio, and for the reciprocal contact between the painter and his yet misunderstood brother Melchiorre D'Enrico.