Master Paintings and Sculpture Part II
Master Paintings and Sculpture Part II
Property from a Private Collection
Scipione Pulzone
Portrait of a woman in a black dress, bust-length
Auction Closed
January 27, 09:38 PM GMT
Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Private Collection
Scipione Pulzone
Gaeta 1544 - 1598 Rome
Portrait of a woman in a black dress, bust-length
signed and dated lower left: Scipio Caietanus / faciebat 1569
oil on canvas
canvas: 17¾ by 14¼ in.; 45.1 by 36.2 cm.
framed: 27⅝ by 24 in.; 70.2 by 61.0 cm.
Thence by descent in the Stroganoff family;
By whom sold at Count Grigoriy Sergeyevich Stroganoff's posthumous sale ("Collezione Conte Gregorio Stroganoff"), Rome, Galleria d'arte, 25 April 1925, lot 601 (as a portrait of Vittoria Colonna);
Ruspoli collection, Palazzo Ruspoli, Nemi;
Thence by descent to Princess Droutzkoy Colonna Ruspoli;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 14 December 1984, lot 240;
Where acquired by the present collector.
A. Muñoz, La collezione Stroganoff, Rome 1910, p. 6;
A. Muñoz, Pièces de choix de la collection du Comte Grégoire Stroganoff, Rome 1911, p. 37, reproduced pl. 26;
A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiano, vol. IX, part 7, Milan 1934, p. 781;
A. Vannugli, "Giacomo Boncompagni duca di Sora e il suo ritratto dipinto da Scipione Pulzone," in Prospettiva 61 (January 1991), p. 64 note 7, reproduced fig. 6;
P. Leone de Castris, in Der Glanz der Farnese, Kunst und Sammeleidenschaft in der Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, Munich 1995, pp. 251-253, under cat. nos. 57, 58;
A. Dern, "Scipione Pulzone, Neue Erkenntnisse zum Oeuvre des italienischen Altmeisters," in Weltkunst 67, no. 21 (November 1997), p. 2330, reproduced in color fig. 2;
A. Dern, Scipione Pulzone (ca. 1546-1598), Weimar 2003, pp. 94-95, cat. no. 5, reproduced p. 229, fig. 2.
In this early signed and dated work by the celebrated portraitist Scipione Pulzone, the refined sitter, wearing a delicately-rendered lace bodice and translucent taupe veil, gazes directly at the viewer. Pulzone modeled her physiognomy, bathed in cool light, with graceful naturalism and a precision of expression. Describing the work in 1910, Antonio Muñoz wrote that the woman, then erroneously thought to be the Roman sixteenth-century poet Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), possessed a "Greek serenity and imparted a certain respect on the viewer, as if she were a pure and crystalline marble deity."1
A note on the provenance
The work once formed part of Count Stroganoff's celebrated collection of Old Masters. He housed the collection, which included Duccio's Madonna and Child behind a parapet (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 2004.442), at the Palazzo Stroganoff, located at 59, Via Sistina, in Rome. Following the Count's death in 1910, the collection passed to his daughter, Princess Maria Grigorievna Scerbatov, who ultimately ceded her hereditary rights to her children, Prince Vladimir Alekseevich and Princess Aleksandra Alekseeva. Princess Scerbatov and her son and daughter divided their time between Italy, Russia, and Ukraine. In 1920, while at their country estate Nemirov, all three were killed by the Bolsheviks. The Prince's widow, Princess Elena Petrovna Scerbatov (later Wolkonsky), escaped to Rome with her young children, Princess Olga Vladimirovna and Princess Maria Vladimirovna. Subsequently, the family returned to the Palazzo Stroganoff and during the 1920s sold the family collection through a series of auctions.2
1 "guarda con serenità greca e impone quasi rispetto a chi osserva, come una marmorea divinità limpida e pura." Muñoz 1910, p. 6.
2 See V. Kalpakcian, "Appendix: Duccio's Madonna and Child and the Collection of Count Grigorij Sergeevich Stroganoff," in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Summer 2008), pp. 58-59.