Beskrivning: Porträttet föreställer prinsessan Isabella de Medici när hon elva år gammal förlovades med Paolo Giordano Orsini. De gifte sig 1558. Hon fick klassisk humanistisk utbildning, vilket bara var tillgängligt för kvinnor ur högsta samhällsskiktet. Porträttets mörka bakgrund framhäver hennes bleka hy, uttrycksfulla ögon och fina drag. Örhängena i form av ymnighetshorn anspelar på fertilitet.

Description: 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]

Webbtext (Beskrivning): Den unga Isabella Romola de Medici levde i 1500-talets Italien. Hon var dotter till den mäktige hertigen Cosimo de Medici vid vars hov konstnären Agnolo Bronzino arbetade och utförde otalig målningar och porträtt av familjen. Isabella de Medici avbildade han många gånger, som barn, ung och som vuxen kvinna. Han fick dock aldrig chans att måla hennes porträtt som gammal. Hon dog tidigt, mördad av en svartsjuk äkta man. Enligt legenderna spökar Isabella fortfarande vid platsen där hon dog, i Villa di Cerrata Guidi utanför Florens.

Se beskrivning i den engelska versionen.

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2009

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2012

Titel (sv): Isabella de' Medici (1542-1576)
Titel (en): Isabella de Medici (1542-1576)
Etikett (sv): Isabella de' Medici
Etikett (en): Isabella de' Medici