Lavinia Fontana – Portrait of a Lady (30,5 × 23 cm). A state portrait of a noble Italian woman from the late sixteenth century: a full-length figure set in a loggia interior, positioned between a table covered with green baize and a vase of flowers, and an open landscape with a bright sky. The sitter wears a black dress in the Spanish fashion with a high starched ruff and a white brocade forepart; around her neck is a long gold chain. She holds gloves in her right hand, while her left rests on the table. To the right, beside the balustrade, stands a Cupid; at her feet is a small dog. Cupid strokes a black raven with a ring in its beak – a clear heraldic emblem of King Matthias Corvinus and his descendants – suggesting that the sitter belonged to a Hungarian Corvin line of the nobility. These motifs, together with the gloves, read as emblems of matrimony and fidelity. The composition is frontal and balanced; the colors have enamel-like clarity; the modeling is somewhat dry and slightly elongated-traits of late-Renaissance, Mannerist court painting. The image is austere and restrained, underscoring the sitter’s status and virtues.

The style of the work combines the careful descriptiveness and fine attention to detail characteristic of the Cremonese tradition with the saturated color of the Bolognese school and Venetian influence, as well as Flemish meticulousness and elements of naturalism. The compositional choices are close to the practice of Prospero Fontana and of Bolognese portraitists such as Bartolomeo Passarotti, which supports the attribution to Lavinia Fontana. The painting is dated to the final decades of the sixteenth century and is comparable to her Portrait of the Gozzadini Family (1584, Bologna), as well as to the Dama con cagnolino in Baltimore and other analogous works in Washington.

Size: 30,5 x 23 cm.