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CATALOGUE ENTRY

Portrait of a Lady

about 1540–1550
Circle of Agnolo Bronzino
Italian, 1503–1572
oil on canvas
48-3/16 × 38 in.
(122.4 × 96.5 cm)
The Clowes Collection
2016.162
SEE TECHNICAL EXAMINATION REPORT

Marks, Inscriptions, and Distinguishing Features

None

Entry

In Portrait of a Lady, an unidentified woman meets the viewer’s stare with a gaze of cool indifference. This patrician air is reminiscent of the aloof expressions often worn by the sitters in the portraiture of the Italian Mannerists Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), and Francesco Salviati (1510–1563)—all of whom worked for Cosimo I de' Medici (1519–1574), the first grand duke of Florence. The detachment exhibited in the expression of the Clowes painting’s protagonist finds an immediate visual correspondence in the state portraits of the wife of Cosimo I, Duchess Eleanora di Toledo (1522–1562).

A cursory comparison of Bronzino’s Portrait of Eleanora di Toledo and Her Son Giovanni (fig. 1) and Portrait of a Lady, which was formerly attributed to the Italian artist Jacopo Zucchi, clarifies why the painting initially was misattributed to the former artist.1 Both paintings are three-quarter-length portraits of women who are accompanied by a living companion: Eleonora has her son, while the Clowes mystery woman has a small dog. Both Bronzino and his master Pontormo are associated with imperturbable portraits of the Medici family of Florence and their supporters, and the preferred format for such representations was commonly a three-quarter-length figure posed in three-quarter view. Unless symmetry was sought by the patron, artists following the inventions of Bronzino commonly employed a three-quarter pose that was accompanied by a gesture. As the portrait of Eleonora and the Clowes painting present likenesses of two elite females, a complementary gesture would need to be subtle indeed, for brash movements would have been deemed unseemly in gentlewomen of that era. Therefore, in these paintings the women lightly touch or hold something with the long, attenuated fingers of their proper right hands: Eleanora touches the shoulder of her son, and the protagonist of the Clowes painting holds a pair of gloves.

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Figure 1: Agnolo Bronzino (Italian, 1503–1572), Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo and Her Son Giovanni, about 1544, oil on panel, 45 × 38 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

In the duchess’s portrait and Portrait of a Lady, the sitters' faces are seen in the aforementioned three-quarter view. However, Eleanora’s visage is turned more fully to engage the viewer, as would be appropriate for an official likeness of the grand duke’s wife. In each composition, the shoulders of the figures marginally recede backward into the picture plane, providing a slight sense of space for their bodies to inhabit.

Each sitter is depicted with her hands placed at two different levels, a common visual trope in Renaissance portraiture of the Cinquecento. Depictions of hands could be problematic in portraits because they often came close to the highest tone of the painting, which was usually reserved for the face.2 As seen in Portrait of a Lady, separating the hands helps to counteract this issue and to enliven the composition. Zucchi employed the sitter’s proper left hand, which is located slightly below the waist, as a directional cue that directs the viewer’s eye to the gloves held in her other hand. Here, the artist’s thoughtful placement of the figure’s arms and hands ensures that the viewer’s gaze continues to circulate throughout the composition, rather than focusing upon the truncation of the figure at mid-thigh level.

Originally purchased as a portrait attributed to Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Lady was subsequently reassigned to Jacopo Zucchi (1541–1596) by British art historian Philip Pouncey (1910–1990) in the summer of 1966.3 The basis for Pouncey’s reattribution rests on two points: first, Mannerist artist and chronicler Giovanni Baglione’s (1566–1643) statement that Zucchi created many portraits for Cardinal Ferdinando I de' Medici (1549–1609), and second, supposed physiognomic correspondences between the sitter in the Clowes painting and the Madonna in Zucchi’s Our Lady with the Holy Child and the Infant John the Baptist in the upper church at San Clemente in Rome (Minor Basilica of San Clemente, Rome).4 However, as will be seen below, based in large part on the distinctive attire of the sitter, Zucchi no longer seems plausible as the author of the Clowes portrait.

Perhaps it is the essence of the portrait’s grandeur that caused art historian Mark Roskill to claim that the Clowes portrait was “Roman rather than Florentine in character."5 Notwithstanding Roskill’s assessment that Portrait of a Lady portrays a Roman matron, her richly appointed clothing suggests that this unidentified woman belonged to the Medici court and held a position of some importance there, perhaps even serving as a lady-in-waiting to Duchess Eleonora. In 1560, Eleonora di Toledo traveled to Siena and then on to Rome accompanied by thirteen ladies-in-waiting from her Florentine court. Accounts of these attendants describe them as being dressed in crimson velvet petticoats.6 This description matches a carmine-colored velvet petticoat (sottana) with detachable sleeves that today is housed in the Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale in Pisa (fig. 2). This outfit dressed a statue in the convent of San Matteo and likely formed part of an Annunciata sculptural group. The convent was situated opposite the Palazzo Reale, the palace where the Medici commonly lodged when visiting Pisa, and this garment, which features gold-embroidered bands of decoration, is speculated to have been donated to the convent by Cosimo I and Eleonora.7 The gold embroidery restricted to the garment’s trim is typical of the gowns of Duchess Eleonora and her attendants in about 1560. The only other extant sixteenth-century Tuscan petticoat is the costume in which the duchess was interred. Although in ruinous condition today, the construction of the surviving sections of her petticoat’s bodice and skirt are nearly identical to those of the Pisan example.8 The Museo di Palazzo Reale petticoat is important to our study of the Clowes Portrait of a Lady, as the painting’s protagonist wears a garment similar in construction, shape, and color, and thus accords withEleonora’s funerary attire. One noteworthy discrepancy between the three costumes is the axial focus of the embroidered bands on the Museo di Palazzo Reale garment and the duchess’s petticoat. This vertical decoration, placed down the center of women’s attire, was a trend that was fashionable from 1550 to 1560.9 The petticoat depicted in the Clowes painting lacks this vertical emphasis; hence, her attire certainly dates to an earlier period, perhaps between 1540 and 1550.

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Figure 2: Red velvet dress of Eleonora of Toledo, 16th century. Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale, Pisa, Italy. Photo credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY.

All three of these petticoats, however, share a similar color: carmine, which is a form of crimson. Carmine-colored cloth was labor-intensive to produce and was therefore correspondingly expensive. As a result, fabrics in deeply saturated crimson, black, and dark blue—all of which were difficult hues to achieve—indicated the level of the owner’s stature and wealth.10 While Eleonora and her ladies-in-waiting often dressed in browns and grays when in Florence to convey modesty and economy, garments of carmine, white, and pagonazzo (purplish violet) were worn by the duchess and her retinue for state occasions.11 Hence, the expensive red fabric paired with the embroidered gold trim—a combination that signaled its wearer’s high social standing and which was commonly used by the Medici duchess—situates the Pisan petticoat and the attire of the figure in Portrait of a Lady within Eleonora’s circle.12

The quality of pigments used in in this portrait further underlines the sitter’s status as a wealthy Florentine. Technical analyses of the paint layers of the woman’s petticoat, face, and jewelry reveal the presence of mercury in large amounts, which indicates that the painter used vermilion, an expensive pigment, in these areas of the canvas.13 The artist used another costly mineral, azurite, for the blue of the necklace’s center jewel. The clothing and jewels seen in Portrait of a Lady appear restrained upon comparison to the embellishments worn by the duchess in state portraits; yet, the luxurious pigments and sizable dimensions of the Clowes painting underscore the importance of the woman portrayed.

Yet another feature of the figure’s attire may help to discern her station in life. The Italian painter and engraver Cesare Vecellio (about 1530–1601), who chronicled Renaissance fashion in his Costumes anciens et modernes: Habiti antichi et moderni di tutto il mundo (1590), recorded that an elite Florentine woman did not wear a veil until she had been married for two years. After this period, she would wear a veil of net that fell from her head to the shoulders.14 A veil of this variety is worn by the sitter in the Clowes painting, with the netting attached to the braided plait of hair that encircles the back of her head. Given Vecellio’s statement recording the conventions of the time, the sitter of the Clowes painting must have been married for at least two years.

Portrait of a Lady represents a married woman whose dress recalls that of a Florentine noblewoman and whose hair resembles the tightly combed hairstyle, without the addition of false hair that the young Duchess Eleanora di Toledo preferred.15 Partially obscured by the jeweled headdress and draped pearls, the braid encircling the back of the woman’s head may be fake, a practice common among Florentine women. Regardless, the sitter’s front tresses are pulledback smoothly from her forehead and combed away from her ears, a style that appears to have been brought to Florence by the duchess.

Other details of costume provide information and are worthy of note. The sitter’s partlet (shoulder covering) matches the netting of her veil and is less ornate than those worn by Eleanora in her state portraits, which were often made with golden thread and pearls. In Portrait of a Lady and in Bronzino’s Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo and Her Son Giovanni, the parlet of each woman was attached to their clothing with the same method. It was laid over the lady’s smock (chemise) and then secured to the top interior of the petticoat. The smocks, which are visible just above the neckline of the sitters' petticoats, are embroidered along their upper edges in a similarly delicate fashion and with comparable colors of thread: predominately black and gold.

Perhaps more helpful for dating the Clowes painting is an analysis of the baragoni (puffed forms) attached to the women’s sleeves. Before Eleonora’s arrival in Florence, the fashion was for large baragoni, as captured in Bronzino’s Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi of about 1540 (fig. 3). In this painting, the heavy ruching of the red satin baragoni contrasts against the dark, narrow undersleeves. Such large protrusions of fabric restricted the wearer to a cloak rather than a sleeved outer garment. With Eleonora’s taste for smaller baragoni, she brought women’s fashion in Florence closer to that of other European courts.16 This alteration in design, which allowed petticoats to be worn with sleeved garments, reflected the duchess’s preference; inventories of her wardrobe record numerous petticoats with accompanying zimarra (a loose, sleeved overgown inspired by Turkish caftans).17 In comparison, it can argued that the capped, rather than puffed, sleeves seen in the Clowes painting present an even greater reduction in the size of baragoni than those seen in the numerous portraits of Eleonora.

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Figure 3: Agnolo Bronzino (Italian, 1503–1572), Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, around 1540, tempera on wood, 40 × 33 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

The extensive jewelry worn by the woman in the Clowes painting again underscores the connection between the sitter and the Florentine court. Writing of the duchess’s personal style, the Venetian ambassador recorded that her clothes were not excessively ostentatious, but her jewels, pearl earrings, necklaces, and girdles (jeweled belts) marked her position and standing in society.18 Multiple portraits of Duchess Eleonora and her daughters, including Bronzino’s Eleonora di Toledo and Her Son Francesco (1549, Pisa, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale) and Alessandro Allori’s Isabella de Cosimo I (about 1555–1558, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), depict their sitters wearing girdles. Often, fans or small pierced containers of perfume or musk were attached, indicating that the belt functioned as both an embellishment and a “purse” of sorts.19 A similar girdle is portrayed on the dropped waistline of the petticoat in the Clowes painting. While this belt features smaller gems, it is not their size but the method used to secure them that is important. The mountings of the gems in both Allori’s portrait of Isabella and Portrait of a Lady are known as “flower” settings, a design that was used in Eleonora’s diamond ring and other jewelry given to her. In the Clowes painting, this floral mounting secures the gems in the two rings, girdle, and headband that decorate the sitter. Similar flower rings and gem settings can be found in portraits of women believed to be linked to the court of Cosimo I.20 For example, Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Girl with a Book (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi), which is today thought to portray Giulia Romola di Alessandro de' Medici (1535–1588), and Bronzino’s Eleonora di Toledo (about 1543, Prague, Národní Galerie) depict their sitters wearing flower-mount rings. The presence of this type of setting in the jewelry in the Clowes painting indicates that that the woman portrayed was likely a lady-in-waiting or favored associate to the Medici duchess.21

Lastly, when Eleonora married Cosimo and moved to Florence, her large pearl earrings, worn in nearly all of her state portraits, were considered an unusual accessory for a noblewoman. This display of wealth was a form of personal decoration that the city’s critics associated with courtesans.22 The woman in the Clowes painting wears pearl drop earrings that are comparable to those owned by the duchess—an unexpected accessory for a woman of stature during this period given their negative connotation among Florentines. This unusual choice only can be rationalized if this individual was connected to Eleonora’s court, where such ornaments were considered conventional. Accompanying the earrings on the figure is a corresponding pearl necklace with a jeweled pendant. Similar pearl necklaces, albeit with much larger pearls and diamond pendants, are visible in many portraits of Eleonora. It must be noted, however, that while earrings were undoubtedly introduced to the Florentine noblewomen through the duchess, pearl necklets were long prized and worn by patrician females before Cosimo I married.

Although the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt’s (1818–1897) publication The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) suggests that the growth of female portraiture was tied to a burgeoning sense of equality, research has demonstrated that this was hardly the case.23 More commonly, likenesses of women were commissioned to commemorate certain family events rather than for reasons of egalitarianism or sentimentality. Quite frequently, the male head of a wealthy family hired an artist to capture the likeness of a daughter, sister, niece, or granddaughter in order to display the female to potential suitors. Such portraits did not solely advertise the sitter’s charms but also reflected upon the sitter’s family. Painters made sure to lavish attention on the intricately embroidered sleeves and jewels worn by the sitter because they indicated the wealth and social standing of the family.24 These extravagant ornaments did not belong to the female portrayed but rather were the possessions of her closest male relative or her husband; they could be taken back and employed as capital at any time if deemed necessary by the head of the family. Despite this lack of seeming control, women served a vital role in forging and strengthening the political, societal, and economic prospects of their families through marriage and childbirth, and female portraiture thus served to establish, record, and celebrate the familial ties of the elite.

When not celebrating an engagement or a marriage, portraits of Italian Renaissance women were sometimes commissioned to commemorate the birth of children, and on rarer occasions to honor the accomplishments of the women depicted.25 The responsibility to produce male heirs resulted in a near constant state of pregnancy for wives. This was particularly true of women born into the patrician class. Historian Dale Kent interestingly notes how an elite lady’s “cycle of pregnancies” was not even halted by the lactation process, as her husband could afford to employ a wet nurse to provide for the newborn child.26 A journal kept by Gregorio Dati, a Florentine merchant, records that he had four wives, who in total bore him 28 children. Out of this number, only eight of his children survived him. The infant mortality rate was frighteningly high during the Renaissance, with nearly half of all children dying before their second birthday. Of those who survived beyond age two, only half lived to age sixteen.27 Given this alarming rate of infant and child mortality, the woman’s role as progenitor was vital for securing her husband’s legacy. A role that the portrait’s composition alludes to with a hint of a well-appointed bedroom behind the figure—indicated by what appears to be mattresses stacked on a bed with accompanying sumptuous drapery.

Despite the fact that the individual identity of the sitter remains unknown, details of her dress, hairstyle, and accessories link her to the Florentine court of Cosimo. Seeming minutiae, like the fact that the protagonist dressed her hair in a manner that exposed her ears—a style Eleonora introduced to Florence—help to locate the noblewoman portrayed in the painting within the duchess’s circle between 1540 and 1550.28 Furthermore, the petticoat’s waistline that falls well below the natural waist of the body, combined with the flattened and stiffened torso, reflects developments in fashion that emerged in about 1540. These advances in style found in the Clowes painting also are detectable in Bronzino’s Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni from 1545, and hence, they support the above proposed date of Portrait of a Lady.29

Author

Chrystine L. Keener

Provenance

Ivan N. Podgoursky (1901–1962);

G.H.A. Clowes (1877–1958), Indianapolis, in 1947;30

The Clowes Fund, Indianapolis, from 1958–2000, and on long-term loan to the Indianapolis Museum of Art since 1971 (C10015);

Given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2016. 

Exhibitions

Franklin College, Franklin, IN, 1965, Italian, Flemish, and English Painting 1500–1800: From the Clowes Fund Collection, no. 4;

Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, 2019, Life and Legacy: Portraits from the Clowes Collection.

References

Italian, Flemish, and English Painting 1500–1800: From the Clowes Fund Collection, exh. cat. (Franklin College: Franklin, IN, 1965), no. 4, as School of Bronzino (reproduced);

Mark Roskill, “Clowes Collection Catalogue” (unpublished typed manuscript, IMA Clowes Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, 1968);

A. Ian Fraser, A Catalogue of the Clowes Collection (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1973), 36–37 (reproduced).

Fiona Beckett, “Conservation in the Clowes Pavilion: Treatment of Jacopo Zucchi’s Portrait of a Lady,” IMA Magazine (May–August 2015): 20–21 (detail reproduced).

Notes

  1. In a letter written by Allen W. Clowes to Bertram Newhouse, of Newhouse Galleries, the painter of Portrait of a Lady was misidentified as “Andréa” Bronzino; Mr. Clowes surely intended to type “Agnolo” Bronzino, as the painting is later referenced in correspondence as from the “school of Bronzino.” In a separate letter to Edmund Pillsbury of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, Mr. Clowes mentions that the painting is from the school of Bronzino, referring to the school of Agnolo Bronzino. Allen W. Clowes to Mr. Bertram Newhouse, 3 October 1966, File 2016.162 (C10015), Clowes Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields; also, see Allen W. Clowes to Edmund Pillsbury, 13 January 1967, File 2016.162 (C10015), Clowes Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎

  2. Lorne Campbell, Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 95–96. ↩︎

  3. This reattribution was shared orally with Mark Roskill in the summer of 1966. Additionally, a letter composed by Edmund Pillsbury confirms this information. Letter from Edmund Pillsbury to Director of the Clowes Fund, 8 January 1966, File 2016.162 (C10015), Clowes Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎

  4. Additionally, other correspondences such as the rendering of the woman’s gown that is similar to the modeling of the drapery in Zucchi’s Amor and Psyche (1589) connect the artist and the Clowes painting. Mark Roskill, “Clowes Collection Catalogue” (unpublished typed manuscript, IMA Clowes Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, 1968); See also, Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de' pittori, scultori, architetti, ed intagliatori, dal pontificato di Gregorio 13. del 1572. sino a ‘tempi di papa Urbano 8. nel 1642. Scritte da Gio. Baglione romano. Con la vita di Salvator Rosa napoletano pittore, e poeta scritta da Gio. Batista Passari, nuovamente aggiunta (Naples, 1733; originally published 1642), 42. ↩︎

  5. Mark Roskill, “Clowes Collection Catalogue” (unpublished typed manuscript, IMA Clowes Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, 1968). For a description of Zucchi’s frescoes, which demonstrate his assimilation of Roman Mannerist tendencies, see Edmund Pillsbury, “Jacopo Zucchi in S. Spirito in Sassia,” The Burlington Magazine 116, no. 857 (August 1974): 437. ↩︎

  6. Before the 1540s, the petticoat was composed of a separate skirt and a bodice, which served solely as undergarments. Roberta Orsi Landini notes that between 1540 and 1560, the Florentine petticoat altered from an item worn under a gown to a standalone garment that often replaced the dress. This petticoat included a skirt and bodice that were sewn together, oftentimes sleeves that were detachable, and even, on occasion, a train. However, as the author notes, if the petticoat was worn for a formal occasion, it needed to be covered with an outer garment such as zimarra or overgown. For further information on this subject see, Roberta Orsi Landini, “I singoli capi di abbigliamento,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 77, 79, 80. ↩︎

  7. Donations of clothing to religious institutions, such as a convent, were an established tradition by 1560. Additionally, the garment’s embroidered decoration was restricted to the bands of trim, which could be detached later and reused on other gowns. Eleonora is known to have offered her tailor suggestions for how such trim on her own gowns could be repurposed. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Gli abiti esistenti,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 71, 74–75; see also Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 27. ↩︎

  8. The duchess’s tomb was opened in 1857, and her petticoat has been reconstructed as far as is possible from its remaining fragments by Mary Westerman Bulgarella. No fragments of sleeves were found in the tomb, and the bodice’s shoulders do not feature ribbons with which they would have been attached. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Gli abiti esistenti,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 71. For further information on the garments in which Eleonora di Toledo was entombed, see Moda alla corte dei Medici: Gli abiti restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia (Florence: Centro Di, 1993) ↩︎

  9. Roberta Orsi Landini, “I singoli capi di abbigliamento,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 85. ↩︎

  10. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 28. ↩︎

  11. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 27. ↩︎

  12. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Gli abiti esistenti,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 27. ↩︎

  13. Fiona Beckett, then Clowes Conservator of Paintings, also detected the presence of lead-tin yellow I in the jewelry. This pigment was a common staple in a Renaissance artist’s palette. See Technical Examination Report. ↩︎

  14. Cesare Vecellio, “Habiti Antichi Et Moderni,” in Cesare Vecellio, Margaret F. Rosenthal, and Ann Rosalind Jones, The Clothing of the Renaissance World: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas; Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti Antichi et Moderni (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 228–229 (Vecellio), 280–281 (Rosenthal). ↩︎

  15. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 31. ↩︎

  16. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 30. ↩︎

  17. The definition for “zimarra” was taken in part from, Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 30.252. ↩︎

  18. See Vincenzo Fedeli al Senato Veneto nel 1561, quoted in Sergio Bertelli, Le corti italiane del Rinascimento (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1985), 24. ↩︎

  19. This accoutrement was worn even by girls as young as age six; and hence, it appears to have been an essential component of a well-appointed wardrobe. Roberta Orsi Landini, “I singoli capi di abbigliamento,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 166. ↩︎

  20. For an example of this type of setting, see Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Girl with a Book (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), which is today speculated to portray Giulia, the daughter of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, who after her father’s assassination was raised by Cosimo’s mother Maria Salviati and his wife, Eleonora. Additionally, Bronzino’s Eleonora di Toledo (about 1543, Prague, Národní Galerie), displays the duchess’s ring. Antonio Geremicca, II.13, “Portrait of a Young Girl with a Book,” in Bronzino: Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici, eds. Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali (Florence: Mandragora: Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, 2010), 136–137; also see, Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 31. ↩︎

  21. In this era, gloves were given frequently to women as gifts, and portraits commonly show sitters holding this accessory. Associated symbolically with gallantry, gloves were a perfect gift for significant individuals. Cosimo I and Eleonora gave gloves as tokens of esteem to Pope Julius III, King Phillip II of Spain, Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, and Ercole II d’Este. The protagonist in Portrait of a Lady carries a pair of brown gloves that have gold-toned gauntlets. These gloves are identical to a pair that belonged to Duchess Eleonora and were carried by her daughter Isabella in the latter’s portrait completed by Allori in about 1555. Gloves were perfumed during this time and could be used to carry small items; in this manner, they served a purpose similar to a women’s girdle. The Florentine sumptuary laws of 1546 regulated the amount of money allowed to be spent on the perfuming of gloves. Roberta Orsi Landini, “I singoli capi di abbigliamento,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 167–168. ↩︎

  22. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 37. ↩︎

  23. This idea is conveyed at several points in Burckhardt’s text. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860: English ed. London, Phaidon Press, 1960); Dale Kent separately came to this conclusion in her essay, “Women in Renaissance Florence,” in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women, ed. David Alan Brown (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2001), 26. ↩︎

  24. Joanna Woods-Marsden, “Portrait of the Lady, 1430–1520,” in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women, ed. David Alan Brown (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2001), 76. ↩︎

  25. Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of Laura Battiferri (1555–1560, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio) falls into this latter category and celebrates the sitter’s accomplishments as a poet through the comparison of her distinctive profile to that of the famed Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), whose posthumous likeness was recorded in the artist’s earlier Allegorical Portrait of Dante Alighieri (1541, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art). Raffaele de Giorgio, “IV.8, Portrait of Laura Battiferri,” in Bronzino: Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici, eds. Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali (Florence: Mandragora: Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, 2010), 218. ↩︎

  26. Dale Kent, “Women in Renaissance Florence,” in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women, ed. David Alan Brown (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2001), 32. ↩︎

  27. Dale Kent, “Women in Renaissance Florence,” in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women, ed. David Alan Brown (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2001), 32. For further information on the death of women in Renaissance Florence due to childbirth and infant mortality, see also Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 25. ↩︎

  28. The duchess’s hairstyle changed slightly after this period. The hair was pulled back with a braid on the top of the head and some curls. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 31–33. ↩︎

  29. Roberta Orsi Landini, “I singoli capi di abbigliamento,” in Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo a la sua influenza (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005), 83–84. ↩︎

  30. In correspondence relating to Dr. Clowes’s interest in this painting, and its subsequent purchase in spring 1947, Podgoursky does not reveal his source for this painting; see letter from Podgoursky to G.H.A. Clowes, 3 January 1947, and following letters, Correspondence Files, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎