(Bologna 1665–1747)
Portrait of a Lady as an Allegory of Abundance,
oil on canvas, 111 x 85 cm, framed

This clearly laudatory and flattering portrait is enriched with symbols that make it open to many different interpretations: in addition to the rose, a symbol of beauty, held between the fingers of the girl’s left hand, vine branches and bunches of grapes adorn her head and are held in her right hand, while other summer and autumn-ripening fruits are depicted in the foreground (apples, figs, and more grapes). She does not personify a precise season, although she wears the yellow dress of Summer prescribed by Cesare Ripa in his Iconologia (1593), nor is she a specific divinity: she is not Flora, goddess of flowers, and neither is she Ceres, goddess of the earth and fertility, who is generally associated with the presence of ears of corn, notably absent here. Although she is not accompanied by the usual cornucopia of fruit, she actually symbolises Abundance, generated by the gift of her beauty. The portrait therefore takes on a marked nuptial connotation.

Unknown until now, this beautiful portrait is destined to occupy a key position in the catalogue of Giuseppe Maria Crespi, to whom it can be attributed with certainty, and placed within the chapter of his highly successful and varied portrait production. In this, as in other cases, the requirements of the ‘state portrait’, designed to emphasise the social status of the model by using sophisticated allegory amongst other things, are combined with disenchanted realism which, although encompassing ennobling intent, adds truth to the image and brings it to life. Given the lack of sources regarding this type of private production by the Bolognese painter, it seems impossible to identify the lady in the portrait: we must suppose she is a young girl from the Bolognese aristocracy who is about to get married and continue the line of another noble house thanks to her fertility. Significantly, the typology of the face also appears in the personification of Painting in An Allegory of the Arts from the Schönborn collection in Pommersfelden (Schloss Weißenstein, inv. 442), attributed to the painter by Carlo Volpe in 1961 (see M. Pajes Merriman, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Milan, 1980, p. 209). The date of execution in the last decade of the 17th century is also shared by the two paintings, as is demonstrated by the softly applied paint used to portray the flesh and the more dynamic and expressive paintwork in the depiction of the drapery in both works.

The rich areas of still life also reveal a very free, virtuoso style that, following the example of Dutch paintings present in the Medici collections, Crespi pursued in the two small canvases depicting Game and Fish painted in just two days for the great prince Ferdinando in 1708 and now in the Uffizi (Inv. 1890, Nos. 7655 and 10035; repr. in La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, by D. Benati and L. Peruzzi, Milan, 2000, 1999, p. 93-94). The suggested date is also supported by the comparison between the rose held in the hand of the young girl and the roses that appear in great quantities in the Portrait of Virginia Sacchetti Caprara with Maid, which sources tell us was painted in 1699 (current location unknown, this large painting is reproduced by Pajes Merriman, op. cit., p. 185).

During this phase of his career, Crespi dallied with the elegant affectations typical of late 17th-century Bolognese painting and a personal, but still rather restrained naturalist style: just a few years later, the frescoes in Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande in Bologna (circa 1701) would lead him towards a loaded and humoral realism, which attracted plenty of criticism at the time.

We are grateful to Professor Daniele Benati for confirming the attribution and for cataloguing this lot.