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Artist or Maker: Circle of Sofonisba Anguissola (Cremona 1527-1626 Palermo)

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Provenance: (Possibly) Livio Odescalchi, Duca di Bracciano (d. 1713), and by descent to
Princess Marie de la Paix Odescalchi, later Countess Kupstein, where recorded at the Palazzo Odescalchi, hanging in the Billiard Room, no. 2, by whom given as a gift in 1903 to
Paul Janson, Brussels, and by inheritance to the present owner.

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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

This hitherto unpublished portrait, whose attribution is yet to be established with certainty, was ascribed in the 1970s to Alonso Sánchez Coello. At that time Xavier de Salas of the Prado Museum, Madrid, proposed that the pearl earring worn by the sitter was the famous Peregrina pearl from the Spanish crown and on that basis suggested that the sitter might be Elizabeth de Valois, the third wife of Philip II or possibly their daughter the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (written communication, March 1976), who sat for Sánchez Coello, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rubens and Frans Pourbus II, examples of which can all be seen in the Prado, Madrid.

Recent re-examination of the portrait has ruled out the idea of the Spanish origins of this picture. We are grateful to Professor Aileen Ribeiro, of the Courtauld Institute, who has deemed the costume to be Italian from around 1600. Furthermore, both the free handling of paint and the general animation of the sitter accord with this idea that the portrait was executed in Italy at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The identity of the sitter was first proposed by Diana Scarisbrick, to whom we are grateful. She noted the prominence given to the daisies (margherite) in her hair and the striking likeness with a portrait of Margherita of Savoy with a dwarf, given to Sofonisba, in a private collection, Madrid. We are also grateful to Doctor Daniele Sanguineti who has independently endorsed the identity of the sitter, comparing this picture closely to the full-length portrait of Margherita by Frans Pourbus II in the sacristy of the church of Saints Ambrogio and Carlo al Corso, Rome. That portrait was executed in Turin in 1606. Pourbus, who was the chief portrait painter for Vincenzo Gonzaga, 4th Duke of Mantua, was despatched from Mantua by Vincenzo's son Francesco to paint Margherita, who was one of his prospective brides. They married two years later.

Although this and the Rome portrait are close in terms of the posture of the sitter and her face, on stylistic grounds the present work seems more likely to be by an Italian hand close to Sofonisba and touched by Barocci. This is suggested by the very vibrancy of the sitter's presence (perhaps beyond Pourbus's reach), the roseate flesh tones and a sense of spontaneity intimated at by the unruliness of the ruff and the motion of the arms. The portrait is imbued with added potency due to the erotic nature of some of the pendants in the jewellery worn around her neck.

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