Portrait of a young patrician woman - Attributed to Scipione Pulzone (1544-1598)

Oil on canvas, central Italy, last quarter of the 16th century.
Facing us from three quarters, a ravishing young girl with expressive eyes observes us. The quality of her toilette is striking: fine lace marks the shoulders and emphasizes a figure wrapped in a pink dress with red motifs, whose high collar ends in a gadrooned strawberry. A heavy two-row gold and coral necklace harmoniously completes an outfit which, with its high degree of refinement, indicates a high social standing. This face, with its youthful features, is that of adolescence; the young lady is not yet a woman. The intention of this portrait would therefore be to reveal the beauty of her model to potential suitors for engagement? Could the reddish hue of her outfit be a promise of love to which her white floral headdress, a symbol of purity, could respond?

This is a late 16th-century portrait in the style of Anthonis Mor, a portraitist of the Spanish court whose style reverberated throughout Europe. One of his most prolific Italian followers was Scipione Pulzone, to whom we can attribute our painting. Although the aesthetic canons of his time required him to depict his model in a somewhat fixed pose, he nevertheless succeeded in breathing life into her by giving her a look that seems to follow the viewer wherever he may be. This virtuosity, which his friend the painter Giovanni Baglione described as "naturalistic", earned him a certain success with the great Italian families. Among his portraits of young patrician women, those of Vittoria Accoramboni (Castello di Bracciano), Marie de Médicis as a child (Poggio Imperiale, Florence) and Clélia Farnèse (Uffizi Museum, Florence) each bear a striking stylistic resemblance to our composition.

We have chosen to present the work in an Emilian gilded casseta frame with bullinato foliage scrolling.
Dimensions: 60 x 45.5 cm - 72 x 56 cm with frame

Biography: Scipione Pulzone (Gaeta, 1544 - Rome, Feb. 1, 1598) learned painting from the Roman Jacopino del Conte, before being admitted to the Academy of St. Luke in 1567. Having observed the portraits painted in Rome by Raphael and Anthonis Mor, he naturally drew inspiration from them, but enhanced his own style with shimmering colors reminiscent of Venetian painting. In 1572, he was invited to Naples by Don Juan of Austria to paint his portrait, which enhanced his aura as a court painter and led to further prestigious commissions. Long praised for his portraits, art historians are now rediscovering this artist in the light of his religious works. Indeed, he was one of the first to move away from the late mannerism of his contemporaries in favor of a clearer, less esoteric art, as prescribed by the directives of the Council of Trent.

Bibliography :
- ACCONCI, Alessandra (ed.), Scipione Pulzone?: da Gaeta a Roma alle Corti europee, (cat. exp. Mostra, Gaeta, Museo diocesano, 27 giugno-27 ottobre 2013), Rome, Palombi & Partner, 2013.
- CRANSTON, Jodi, The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- DE LOGU, Giuseppe, Il ritratto nella pittura italiana, Bergamo, Istituto italiano d'arti grafiche, 1975.
- DERN, Alexandra, Scipione Pulzone (ca. 1546-1598), Weimar, Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2003.