Isabella de Medici (1542-1576)
Artist/Maker
DatesMade: Made c. 1552 - 1553
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Mått 44 x 36 cm h x w x d: Ram 70 x 62 x 10 cm
Inventory numberNM 37
AcqusitionTransferred 1866 from Kongl. Museum
Other titlesTitle (sv): Isabella de' Medici (1542-1576) Title (en): Isabella de Medici (1542-1576) Label (sv): Isabella de' Medici Label (en): Isabella de' Medici
DescriptionDescription: This portrait shows Princess Isabella de’ Medici on her engagement, at the age of eleven, to Paolo Giordano Orsini. They were married in 1558. She received a classical humanist education, which was only available to women from the highest echelons of society. The dark background brings out her pale complexion, expressive eyes and fine features. The cornucopia earrings are a reference to fertility. Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 99: FORMER INV. NOS.: 66 (B. 1830s); KM 1057. TECHNICAL NOTES: The support consists of a single board of wood (hardwood), probably some kind of fruit tree or poplar. The grain is vertical. The edges are not bevelled and the wood is slightly worm-eaten. It has been cradled and the painting has probably been made somewhat smaller. The ground is white and even and covers the entire support. The paint layers are semi-transparent and very abraded. The lower part of the painting is badly damaged, with large fillings and losses of original paint (damage caused by fire?). Documented restorations: 1978: Superficial inspection and conservation of surface. 1997: Removal of varnish, old discoloured retouches and overpaintings (the background and the girl’s hair were almost completely overpainted). Filling, retouching of losses and abrasions. Varnish. PROVENANCE: Byström 1852 BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 3 (as Bronzino); Sander 1872– 76, vol. IV, p. 110, no. 6 (as Bronzino); Göthe 1887, p. 3; NM Cat. 1941, p. 7; Sirén 1928, p. 7; Berenson 1932; Sirén 1933, pp. 125–126; Berenson 1936; Sirén 1941, pp. 8–9; Strömbom 1949, p. 40; Emiliani 1960; Langedijk 1981–87, vol. I, p. 128, vol. II, p. 1094, no. 63,5; NM Cat. 1990, p. 53 (as Bronzino, attributed to); Langdon 2006, pp. 108–120; Baldinotti 2010, p. 132; Geremicca 2010, p. 136; Ekman 2011, pp. 74–76 (as Bronzino, attributed to). EXHIBITED: Ansikte mot Ansikte: Porträtt under fem sekel, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2001–02. This portrait of a young girl carries the inscription “D ISABELLA DE MEDICE”, i.e. Donna Isabella de’ Medici, the second daughter of Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora of Toledo. She was born in 1542, and in 1553, at the age of 11, she was betrothed to Paolo Giordano Orsini d’Aragona, Duke of Bracciano and Anguillara. The marriage was consummated in 1558, although she remained at the Medici court for years. She bore a daughter, Francesca Eleonora (Nora) in 1571, and a son, Virginio in 1572, who succeeded his father as duke of Bracciano (1585‒1615). After an affair with her husband’s cousin, Troilo Orsini, Isabella was murdered on the orders of her husband in 1576. The couple is depicted together with their son and other members of the Medici family representing different saints in the painting Madonna and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, attributed to Giovanni Maria Butteri, executed the year before the murdering (Uffizi Gallery, Inv. 1890, no. 3402) Isabella is depicted as a blonde girl in her early teens. She has brown eyes and her skin is pale against a dark olive-green background, in a similar way to other portraits of the Medici children, particularly that of her brother Francesco, now in the Uffizi Gallery (inv. 1890, no. 1571). She wears earrings made of gold and pearls, in the form of cornucopias, a traditional symbol of fertility, but also alluding to her motto “FLORES FRVCTVSQUE SIMVL” (Flowering and fruits together) and to her eloquence and erudition in languages, philology and especially music.¹ She is dressed in a wide-necked blue gown (soutane) with a gorgiera made of bobbin lace, or more plausibly in the ancient technique of sprang, recognizable by the sparse pattern.² The lower part of the panel has some areas of damage, which seem to originate from a fire, and the blue texture may originally have had a different appearance. Even so, the colours are restrained, and they seem to represent decorum for an unmarried Medici princess. This painting, together with 29 others, was acquired from the heirs of the sculptor Johan Niklas Byström for the sum of 10,000 riksdaler banco.³ A copy of it is known to exist in a private collection. That painting may have the very same provenance, i.e. the Byström Collection, as it was once in the royal collection of Oscar I and has a signature on the reverse (F. Müntter / Müller), which in my opinion may refer to Friedrich Müller.⁴ Müller was a German artist and art collector in Rome in the early 19th century and a close friend of Byström’s. He went to Rome as early as 1778 and the Nationalmuseum portrait could have been incorporated in his collection some time between 1778 and 1825, the year he died and left part of his art collection to Byström. The present painting is attributed to Agnolo Bronzino in the early inventories of the new Nationalmuseum and in the catalogues by Sander (1876), Göthe (1920), Sirén (1928, 1933, 1941) and Strömbom (1949). In 1932 Bernard Berenson was the first outside Sweden to acknowledge the portrait as an original by Bronzino, with a slight change later on to “Portrait of Isabella de’ Medici (st.)”, signifying a studio work.⁵ This attribution was maintained by Andrea Emiliani in 1960.⁶ In her extensive corpus of the Medici portraits, Karla Langedijk catalogues the portrait as a studio work of Bronzino.⁷ The painting is further discussed by Gabrielle Langdon in her work from 2006 on the Medici women,⁸ in which she considers it to be a copy of a now lost original. The portrait has been neglected in some later publications,⁹ but has received fresh attention and is mentioned in the recently published exhibition catalogue from 2010.¹⁰ Considering the damage, the many retouches, and the fact that this is the only known portrait of Isabella as a child, I would suggest that this may be an authentic portrait by Bronzino. Giorgio Vasari mentions that Bronzino painted “all the Duke’s children, some for the first time and others for the second, the Lady Maria, a very great and truly beautiful girl, the Prince Don Francesco, the Lord Don Giovanni, Don Garzía and Don Ferdinando in a number of pictures which are all in the guardaroba of His Excellency”. ¹¹ This indicates that Isabella, too, must have been portrayed by Bronzino and that a portrait of her was kept in the guardaroba of Grand Duke Cosimo I. Furthermore, we know that Bronzino travelled to Pisa in December 1550 to paint the portraits of the Medici children. And in a letter to the duke’s major-domo Pier Francesco Riccio, dated 1551, Bronzino writes that he had finished the portraits of Maria and Giovanni, that he was finishing that of Garzía, and that he was waiting for Francesco to return from Livorno so that he could start on a portrait of him,¹² probably followed by this portrait of Isabella. The portrait has also been related to what are known as the Medici miniatures, or quadretti, executed in the 1550s by the workshop of Bronzino for the Scrittoio di Calliope in the Palazzo Vecchio.¹³ But this connection seems less probable, as the Medici miniatures are painted on tin on a much smaller scale (15 × 12 cm) and are not of the same high quality as the Nationalmuseum portrait, and Isabella is not even represented in the series of 29 portraits preserved in the Uffizi Gallery. There are a few surviving portraits of Isabella in her twenties, painted by the workshops of Bronzino and Alessandro Allori.¹⁴ While many of the portraits by Bronzino are easily recognizable, this particular portrait type was established by the portrait of Eleonora of Toledo dated 1543, now in the Národní Galerie in Prague (inv. no. 11971), and it was reused for her children in the years to come. This is the only extant portrait of Isabella as a child, and if we are to trust the inscription, which may have been added later, and the girl is portrayed from nature in her early teens, as stated by Sirén and others,¹⁵ the painting must have been executed in the early 1550s. We know from Vasari and even from Bronzino himself that he painted several portraits of the Medici children in 1551, and this one may well also have been executed that year or the year after. And given the cornucopia earrings and the portrait’s Roman provenance, it seems reasonable to suggest that the panel was commissioned for the betrothal of Isabella de’ Medici and Paolo Giordano Orsini that took place in early 1553. je 1 Langdon 2006, pp. 115–116, 161. 2 Thanks to Dr Lena Dahrén for helping me with the interpretation and identification of the lace. 3 For recent research on the Byström Collection, see Ekman 2011. 4 A reproduction of this copy is preserved in a letter to the Museum, under the heading Byström, NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet. 5 Berenson 1932; Berenson 1936. 6 Emiliani 1960. 7 Langedijk 1981–87, vol. II, p. 1094, no. 63,5. 8 The interpretation of the earrings has been suggested by Langdon 2006, pp. 108–120. 9 For example Brock 2002; McCorquodale 2005. 10 Baldinotti 2010, p. 132; Geremicca 2010, p. 136, in Falciani and Natali, eds., 2010. 11 Vasari 1568, Bettarini and Barocchi, eds., 1966–87, vol. VI, pp. 233–234. 12 See Heikamp 1955, p. 137, doc. 1. 13 Langedijk 1981–87, vol. I, p. 128; Ekman 2011, pp. 74–75. 14 Langedijk 1981–87, vol. 15 Sirén 1933, p. 125. [End]
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