Among the most beautiful portraits of him painted between 1827 and '44 we remember those of Gino Capponi, Lorenzo Bartolini, Elisabetta Ricasoli, Luigi de Cambray Digny with his son, Giovanni Carmignani, Marianna Rucellai de 'Bianchi, Maria Antonietta grand duchess. He died in Florence in 1855. An excellent draftsman, Bezzuoli was loyal to the schemes and precepts of the academy both in the canvases and in the frescoes; if he preferred romantic subjects, in the fashion of France, he did not have the beautiful qualities of chiaroscuro and coloring of the Romantic painters from beyond the Alps. But in the portraits, in front of the truth, B. forgot theories and academic precepts and did very tasty things that were similar to the portraits of the Ingres, which he probably saw working in Florence in 1820.

Reference bibliography

D. Frosini, sub vocem Bezzuoli Giuseppe, in the Biographical Dictionary of Italians, vol. IX, 1967

The two portraits depicting an English knight in military uniform and his wife can be considered among the most beautiful and elegant portraits of Giuseppe Bezzuoli. Of the two paintings recently sold on the English market, the origin or identity of the portraits has not been identified at the moment. It is possible that the English couple was passing through Florence, where he decided to be immortalized by one of the masters of the time, also in memory of his stay in Florence, as the view of the city that appears in the background of his wife's painting could testify. The knight, portrayed in his uniform, is not caught in his military arrogance but in a more private and informal moment, as evidenced by the hat placed sideways on a table. He shows on his chest a medal from the Battle of Waterloo (1815). The wife, smiling and elegantly dressed in a green silk dress, turns her gaze outside and is portrayed in an interior with neoclassical decorations; sits on an armchair with armrests with a lion's head carved finish, the same on which Elisabetta Ricasoli is sitting (fig. 1), portrayed by Bezzuoli in 1825. This is the significant date for the chronology of the two works, whose execution is in fact it can be placed in a time span between 1820-25; this is also confirmed by the type of hairstyle, of neoclassical memory but which already turns to the romanticism of those years, and the cut of the dress, no longer with the wide neckline that was so fashionable in the Empire period but high-necked and finished with a soft lace collar that recalls the dress of Mademoiselle Jeanne Suzanne Catherine Gonin (fig. 2), by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, dated 1821, but also the painting by the master Pietro Benvenuti, Portrait of a woman (fig. 3) of 1818. In fact, according to the dictates of fashion after 1815, the shoulders, neck and chest of the ladies had to be strictly covered. The cashmere motif shawl is also that of the fashion of the time and is the same that appeared a few years earlier in Pietro Benvenuti's Portrait of Elena Mastiani Brunacci (fig. 4).