(Florence, active in the 16th Century)
Portrait of an elderly lady with a child,
oil on panel, 121 x 87.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sedelmeyer, Paris 3-5 June 1907, no. 147 (as “Sebastiano del Piombo, with the child added by Bronzino”);
with Leasarte, 1990 (according to a label on the reverse);
sale, Palazzo Visconti di Bergamo-Gera d’Adda, Gilberto Algranti-Franco Semenzato, May 1998, lot 1384 (as “Bronzino with the child painted by Santi di Tito”);
Private collection, Italy

Literature:
R. B. Simon, Bronzino’s Portrait of Maria Salviati, in: A. M. Gáldy (ed.), Agnolo Bronzino: Medici Court Artist in Context, Cambridge 2013, p. 22, fig. 9 (as the “Master of the Sedia Dantesca”)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 36641) as Agnolo Bronzino.

We are grateful to Robert Simon for suggesting the attribution for the present painting. This catalogue text in based on his article (see R. B. Simon, Bronzino’s Portrait of Maria Salviati, in: A. M. Gáldy (ed.), Agnolo Bronzino: Medici Court Artist in Context, Cambridge 2013, pp. 17-30).

The present painting relates to a Portrait of a Lady, identified as Maria Salviati and given to Agnolo Bronzino (oil on panel 127 x 100 cm) in San Francisco, Fine Art Museum, Kress Collection (see fig. 1.) However, in the present composition a young child has been incorporated who is leaning against the imposing sitter´s knee.

The Kress painting has been recently considered the painting that was mentioned by Vasari, as executed by Bronzino of Maria Salviati (see: G. Vasari, Le Vite, Florence 1878-85, VII, 598). However, the Kress portrait was sold and catalogued as “an abbess” by Bronzino at auction in 1848 (sale, Christie’s, London, 22 January 1848, lot 82). Two years later its new owner, Domenico Campanari, published it as a portrait of Vittoria Colonna by Michelangelo, promoting this identification in other publications which appeared in the 1850s (see D. Campanari 1850; 1853a; 1853b; 1854a; 1854b).

The identification of the sitter of the Kress painting as Maria Salviati first appeared in Andrea Emiliani’s Bronzino monograph of 1960 (see A. Emiliani, 1960, 72, pl. 28). Emiliani’s identification was accepted, if tentatively. In 1963 Berenson placed the portrait in his list of Bronzino paintings with the title Portrait of an Old Woman with a Book, but captioned the illustration as ‘Maria Salviati (?)’. Ten years later Baccheschi included her among Bronzino’s opera completa, also as Maria with a question mark (see Berenson 1963, I, 45; II, pl. 1443; Baccheschi 1973, no. 39). The identity of the elderly lady became fixed as Maria Salviati (see I Maestri del Colore of 1966-67, pl. III; and Charles McCorquodale’s monograph of 1981, pl. 42) and again in more recent studies.

Robert Simon has reasons for doubting Maria’s identity in the Kress painting principally on account of the sitter´s age. He argues that it is possible to debate the precise age of this woman, but he thinks that there can be little doubt that she far exceeds the 46 years of Maria’s age at the time of her death in 1543. Pontormo’s Portrait of Maria Salviati with a child in Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, which may be posthumous, would in any case, he argues, depict Maria in her final appearance, and Vasari’s roundel clearly derives from it. Simon believes the identity of the sitter is further clouded by the existence of the present painting which he believes to be a replica of the Kress portrait by the same artist, depicting the same woman but now accompanied by a young child. It has been argued that the child is a later addition, but what is clear is that she is entirely different from the one which accompanies Maria in the Baltimore painting.
With the exception of its nineteenth century attribution to Michelangelo the Kress portrait has consistently been considered as a work by Bronzino. Simon argues that although the portrait has been compared with Bronzino’s portraits of Lucrezia Panciatichi and Bia de’ Medici dating from the early 1540s, the Kress painting must be considered a work of at least a generation later.

Robert Simon compares the Kress portrait and the present work to a Portrait of a Man in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, which was formerly catalogued as by Bronzino and is now considered to be by an anonymous Florentine painter (Inv. 199, see Ferino-Pagden et al., 1991, 57, pl. 131). Simon has grouped these works, including the present painting, and suggested a provisional name for the artist as the ‘Master of the Sedia Dantesca’, noting the Dante chair in which several of his subjects seem to be posed. He argues that the same artist appears to be responsible for a Portrait of an Elderly Man with a Child in the Michele and Donald D‘Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts (Inv. no. 64.03). The old man in the Springfield painting is seated in a Dante chair and shares similar characteristics of composition, posture and expression. And, when compared with the present painting, the two girls seem to be sisters, both in appearance and style.

Technical analysis:

IRR images of the present painting show some changes in the composition: the face of the woman appears to have been originally turned slightly to her right, presumably looking towards the girl, and her right hand was altered. The under drawing, where it can be detected, appears to be quite free, especially around the area of the child’s dress.

We are grateful to Gianluca Poldi for the technical examination.