(Mantua 1552–1597)
Portrait of Margherita Gonzaga,
oil on canvas, 214 x 118 cm, framed

Provenance:
European Private Collection

Literature:
C. Tellini Perina, Una proposta per Giovanni Bahuet, in: Quaderni di Palazzo Te, Milan 1995, p. 92–97, p. 95, fig. 2

Margherita Gonzaga Este (1564-1618), was the daughter of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, sister of Vincenzo I, and wife of Alfonso Il d´Este, the last duke of Ferrara. After the death of her husband in 1597, she returned to Mantua under the name of Madama Serenissima di Ferrara, and founded a convent there in 1599. The sitter is shown in magnificent dress, covered in jewels. The numerous pearl necklaces, called “margaritae” in Latin, could be a word-play on her name. Once widowed, Margherita bequeathed Cesare, Vincenzo’s nephew and inheritor, “omnes gemas, annulos, monilia, margaritas, et alia pretiosa”. As can be seen in a document from 1597, this included countless jewels and a triangle-shaped brooch with three pearl drops, which we can see on the right breast of the sitter. As Margherita appears to be between 20 and 25 in the present painting, it was most probably executed between 1585–90.

Bahuet was born in 1552 and is documented in Florence in 1575. In the years 1584–1591 he created numerous portraits of the d’Este family, as well as of other members of the prominent courts of Northern Italy.