Studio of Alessandro Allori

Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos-Grenville (1828-1889), 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Stowe, near Buckingham;
By decent to his eldest daughter, The Rt. Hon. Mary Elizabeth Morgan-Grenville (1852-1944), 11th Baroness Kinloss CI;
Sold by order of the above and the trustees of the Chandos estate (according to an old label on the reverse);
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 12 January 1979, lot 132 (as School of Agnolo Bronzino, identifying the sitter as possibly Eleanor of Toledo);
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 2007, lot 182 (as Studio of Alessandro Allori, identifying the sitter as Camilla Martelli).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.The painting is restored and should be hung in its current state. The very smooth surface is only interrupted by a horizontal crack or original panel join running through the hair of the figure. The reverse of the panel shows one vertical batten in the center. Although the wood of the panel shows old woodworm and cracks, it does now seem to be repaired and stable. The clothing of the figure, her face and hair are in beautiful condition. Her hand shows a few dots of retouching, as does her neck. There are also about a dozen dots of retouching in the upper right and upper left background.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This exquisitely dressed young woman is almost certainly Virginia de’ Medici, the daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574), Grand Duke of Tuscany, by his second wife, Camilla Martelli (1545-1590).  Camilla had been Cosimo's lover for some time prior to the marriage and Virginia, born out of wedlock, was only legitimized following their wedding in 1570.  The portrait can be compared to that of a noblewoman also painted in the workshop of Alessandro Allori and now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (fig. 1; inv. no. 37.1112).¹  At least four more likenesses of the young Medici woman were grouped together by Karla Langedijk in 1981 and in a number of these portraits the sitter wears the same droplet earrings, pearl necklace and distinctive hairstyle.²  Langedijk erroneously identified the sitter as Dianora, niece of Cosimo's first wife, Eleanor of Toledo (1522-1562) but the clothing worn in some of these portraits, the present one included, post-dates Dianora, who died in 1576.

A smaller version of this portrait, omitting the hand, was offered at Dorotheum in Vienna in 2016 and shows the sitter in a different gown and sleeves and without her collare, or necklace.³  Dr. Elizabeth Pilliod attributed the Dorotheum painting to Giovanni Maria Butteri, who as a young man had assisted in the studio of Agnolo Bronzino alongside Alessandro Allori.  Describing that painting, Pilliod noted that the “brightly illuminated and slightly flatter planes of the face are typical of Butteri’s approach to female sitters” and compared it to the depiction of a woman in the artist’s 1575 Sacra Conversazione with Members of the Medici Family, in the Museo del Cenacolo di Andrea del Sarto, Florence.⁴ 

At the time of the present painting’s sale in 2007 (see Provenance) the sitter was identified as Virginia’s mother, Camilla Martelli, on the basis of the spectacular jeweled collare, worn around her shoulders.  Dott.essa Simona Lecchini Giovannoni, who attributes the painting to Allori and Studio, had recognized the collare as matching that in a portrait by Jacopo Ligozzi in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, traditionally thought to portray Camilla (fig. 2).⁵ Camilla was heavily criticized for her opulent manner of dress, and her fondness for excess and adornment is abundantly clear in Ligozzi’s portrait.  The necklace was given to her by Cosimo and is meticulously described in an inventory of her possessions, drawn up in 1574 by her husband’s eldest son, Francesco, at the time of Cosimo’s death.⁶  Francesco, who had never accepted his father’s youthful second wife, ensured that the properties containing her clothing and jewels were closed up and that Camilla was confined to a convent, where she would remain for the rest of her life. 

In this portrait Virginia wears her hair in a slightly voluminous style, not severely parted, with a dip at the center and adorned with pearls, a coiffure that gained popularity in the 1580s.⁷  Camilla had been in a convent since 1574, long before this hairstyle came into fashion, firmly ruling her out as the sitter.  She was, however, granted permission to leave the convent on two occasions, one of which being the day of her daughter’s wedding in 1586.  As a gift for Virginia’s nuptials, Camilla gave her a jeweled collare, the very same that she herself had received from Cosimo.  As Pilliod asserts, both this and the Dorotheum portrait would have been painted in Florence; since Virginia left the city the same year as her marriage in 1586, we can summize that this was almost certainly a wedding portrait.  

The wedding portrait is made all the poignant by the inclusion of her mother's collare.  What remains to be studied, however, is why in this version Virginia appears to wear the same jewel-studded gown, earrings and pearl necklace as those worn by Camilla in Ligozzi’s portrait, even posing in the same manner with a handkerchief in her right hand.  Virginia sports the garments more discretely, however, wearing a restrained version of the decorative sleeves and dispensing with the veils, feathers and crown.  

 

1. K. Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15-18th Centuries, vol. I, Florence 1981, p. 709, cat. no. 36.1.
2. Ibid., pp, 709-716.
3. Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 19 April 2016, lot 20, catalogue entry by Dr. Elizabeth Pilliod.
4. For the Sacra Conversazione see A. Bernacchioni, Alessandro Pieroni dall'Impruneta e i pittori della Loggia degli Uffizi, exhibition catalogue, Florence 2012, pp. 174-177.
5. Private written communication from Dott.essa Simona Lecchini Giovanoni to the then owner, dated 26 February 2005; for more on the Ligozzi portrait see R. Orsi Landini and B. Niccoli, Moda a Firenze, 1540-1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo e la sua influenza, Florence 2005, pp. 40-42, reproduced p. 41 (the portrait is considered by some to portray Virginia Martelli).
6. Ibid., p. 40.
7. R. Orsi Landini and B. Nicolo, op. cit., p. 137, fig. 70.