School of Fontainebleau, 16th century

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's South Kensington, 29 March 2017, lot 7;

Where acquired by the present owner.

This painting is a near identical version of a composition by an unknown artist of the Fontainebleau School, datable to circa 1550–70, now in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva.¹ Images of Sabina Poppaea, Emperor Nero's second wife, proliferated in French sixteenth-century art, spawning numerous copies and variants. Tacitus (Annales XIII) describes how the Empress Poppaea would partially veil her face in public, arousing the curiosity of onlookers. In Roman times, the transparent veil, or Roman gauze, was traditionally associated with courtesans rather than empresses. This aspect exemplifies the Fontainebleau School’s predilection for coquettish themes, often charged with ambiguous symbolism. Such subjects, frequently drawn from history and mythology, provided a learned pretext for depicting overtly sexual and erotic images, like the female nude.

¹ S. Béguin, in L'Ecole de Fontainebleau, exh. cat., Paris 1972, pp. 213–14, no. 241, reproduced p. 216; https://www.mahmah.ch/collection/oeuvres/sabina-poppaea/1841-0001