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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 109:

FORMER INV. NO.: KM 1046.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of medium-
coarse, plain-weave linen fabric. It has been glue-lined and
mounted on a non-original stretcher. The ground is red. There are
numerous retouches in the background. The varnish is thick and
yellowed. Documented restoration: 1927: Oil varnish removed. Repair.
Varnish.

PROVENANCE: Byström; Grubb 1853.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Byström 1853, p. 14, no. 154 (as Sassoferrato);
NM Cat. 1927, p. 26; Baumgart, in Thieme and Becker, XXVII, p. 461;
Zeri 1957, p. 93; NM Cat. 1958, p. 160 (as Scipione Pulzone); NM Cat.
1990, p. 280 (as Scipione Pulzone); Donò 1996, pp. 82–82, no. 44 II;
Dern 2003, pp. 76, 168 (as Scipione Pulzone, copy after); Acconci
and Zuccari 2013, p. 367.

The elegant noblewoman in the picture is represented
in an intimate moment of prayer. Seated
at a table, she holds a small prayer book in her
hands, from which she raises her watchful eyes to
meet the viewer’s gaze. The woman’s severe black
clothing is brightened by the white pleated cuffs
of the sleeves, and by the blouse gracefully decorated
with fine lace. The head with its dark brown
hair and small curls by the temples is piously
covered by a thin yellowish veil.

The Nationalmuseum’s Portrait of a Lady
with a Book (“Lucrezia Cenci”) belonged to the
19th-century Italian art collection of Johan
Niklas Byström, and later to that of the Na
Nationalmuseum curator Per Wilhelm Grubb, who
sold the canvas to the Museum in 1857.¹ Today
this painting is considered a copy of Scipione
Pulzone’s famous canvas of the same subject,
originally in the Barberini Collection in Rome.
That work was long considered missing² and was
rediscovered when sold in 2006 at Christie’s in
Milan. The painting, signed by the artist, is now
correctly dated to 1591.³

Scipione Pulzone was in great demand as
a portraitist in late 16th-century Rome, as his
contemporaries record. Raffaello Borghini
(1537–1588) wrote of the artist: “Scipione Pulzone
from Gaeta is very excellent … in doing portraits
from life, so done by him that they appear alive.
Therefore, he is required to portray all the principal
lords of Rome and all the beautiful women
… in the making of portraits Scipione is held
marvellous by all”.⁴ Pulzone’s meticulousness,
particularly visible in his early works, derives
from 16th-century Flemish portraiture,⁵ but the
eccentric artist shows a multitude of artistic and
cultural influences, from which he created what
Federico Zeri appositely, in his 1957 work on the
artist, called a “Timeless Art”.⁶

Next to more refined and courtly portraits
of the same period, Pulzone brings a greater
naturalness to his Portrait of a Lady with a Book
(“Lucrezia Cenci”), once in the Barberini Collection,
and most scholars agree in considering it
the artist’s innovative masterpiece in portraiture.⁷
Federico Zeri stressed how, in this work, Pulzone
overcame Mannerism and created a parallel
art to the Classicism of the Bolognese,⁸ while the
great naturalism of this contemporary portraitist
appealed to Caravaggio, present in Rome at the
same time.⁹

The painting was traditionally considered
a portrait of Lucrezia Cenci (1549–1599), the
stepmother of Beatrice Cenci (1577–1599), the
young noblewoman and tragic protagonist in one
of Rome’s most lurid murder trials of the time.
It was first recorded in the 1644 list of Cardinal
Antonio Barberini’s (1607–1671) art collection
in the Barberini palace in Rome.¹⁰ In the 19th
century the work was displayed together with the
famous portrait supposedly of Beatrice Cenci,
once attributed to Guido Reni,¹¹ and that of
Beatrice’s mother, Ersilia Cenci, then attributed
to Caravaggio; and it was therefore considered to
depict the stepmother of the young Beatrice, Lucrezia
Petroni Cenci.¹² The two women, Beatrice
and Lucrezia, shared the same cruel fate and
were sentenced to death for the alleged family
conspiracy, which had led to the violent death
of the despotic paterfamilias Francesco Cenci
(1549–1598).¹³

The original and the copy of Portrait of a Lady
with a Book (“Lucrezia Cenci”) show a few minor
differences. In the Nationalmuseum version, the
cover of the small prayer book the woman holds
in her hands is red, and not blue as in the original.
The sitter’s face is rounder in the copy and
her head leans slightly forward. The little finger
of her left hand also protrudes somewhat. A
replica of Pulzone’s work, resembling the original
painting in every detail, is today preserved in a
private collection in Vienna.¹⁴
se

1 In the Byström Collection the painting was considered a
work of Giovanni Battista Salvi, called il Sassoferrato. RA,
E I a: 280 Finansdep. Konseljakt, ärende nr. II, 1852–05–26,
Katalog öfver framlidne Professor J. N. Byströms
Tafvel-Samling, no. 55 “Fruntimmers porträtt av Sassoferrato,
120 Rdr Banco”. The canvas continued to be regarded
as a work by Sassoferrato after it was purchased for
Grubb’s collection and when it finally entered the Nationalmuseum
in 1857. Byström 1853a, no. 154, p. 12; SSA,
Stockholms Auktionsverk, A I: a, Auktionsprotokoll 1853;
NM, Kongl. Museum, D I; Inventarier 1803–1857.
2 The painting was last recorded in the Barberini Gallery in
Rome by Adolfo Venturi in 1934 (Venturi 1934, pp. 762,
779, 781). In the same year, 1934, a special decree was issued
allowing the Barberini family to sell a large portion of the
collection, and Portrait of a Lady with a Book (“Lucrezia
Cenci”) was later sold at a judicial sale in Rome in 1958.
Christie’s, Milan, 7 June 2006, Dipinti antichi (sale cat.
2006), p. 46; Aronberg Lavin 1975, p. X, note 4.
3 Christie’s, Milan, 7 June 2006 (sale cat. 2006), no. 78, pp.
46–49, Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of a Lady with Book
(“Lucrezia Cenci”), oil on canvas, 70.5 x 57.5. The date on
the canvas was erroneously interpreted as 1594, a date first
recorded in Mariotti 1924, p. 37.
4 Ellis 2007, p. 277.
5 Zeri 1957, pp. 15–19.
6 Zeri 1957.
7 Mariotti 1924, pp. 37–38, fig. 11; Venturi 1934, pp. 778–780,
fig. 435; Zeri 1957, p. 81, fig. 88; Vaudo 1976, pp. 43–44, fig.
53; Zuccari 1985, pp. 170–171; Donò 1996, pp. 20, 82–3, n.
44; Dern 2003, p. 76.
8 Zeri 1957, p. 81.
9 Zuccari 1985, pp. 170–171.
10 Aronberg Lavin 1975, p. 166, no. 233, “Un ritratto di una
Dama, che tiene un offitiolo in mano, con cornice di noce di
mano di Scipione Gaetano”.
11 Vodret 1999, pp. 131–139.
12 Barbier de Mantault 1870, pp. 343, nos. 81, 83 and 85.
13 Sivo 1999, pp. 61–80.
14 Dern 2003, pp. 168–169, no. 58. The phenomenon of replicas
is very [End]

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2012

Titel (sv): Yngre dam, kallad Lucrezia Cenci (1549-1599)
Titel (en): Young Lady, called Lucrezia Cenci
Titel (en): Portrait of a Lady with a Book (“Lucrezia Cenci”)

Title (sv): Yngre dam, kallad Lucrezia Cenci (1549-1599)
Title (en): Young Lady, called Lucrezia Cenci
Title (en): Portrait of a Lady with a Book (“Lucrezia Cenci”)