Frans Pourbus the Younger

Private collection.

Frans Pourbus the Younger’s portraits evince the splendor of the leading courts of seventeenth century Europe. Such is the case with this recently rediscovered head study of Eleonora de’ Medici Gonzaga (1567–1611), the eldest daughter of Francesco I de’ Medici and Joanna of Austria and the sister of Queen Marie de’ Medici. Pourbus most probably painted this preparatory work in about 1600–1602, and the study can be closely linked to several well-known likenesses of the Duchess from this period painted when the Antwerp-born artist was in Mantua in the service of her husband, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga. As one of only a small number of preparatory studies by the Pourbus the Younger that have survived, this painting offers a more thorough understanding of this artist’s working practice as well as his profound closeness to one of the most powerful and intelligent figures of her age.

Born into a family of artists, Frans Pourbus the Younger was the grandson of Pierre Pourbus and the son of Frans Pourbus the Elder. The younger Frans joined the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke as a master in 1591, and from about 1594-1599, he was working to establish his career in Brussels. It was here, while Pourbus was working for Archdukes Albert and Isabella, that Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua first encountered the young Flemish artist. In October 1600, Pourbus the Younger arrived in Mantua to fulfill his position as the Duke's court painter, and he would remain in Italy until 1609, when at the request of Queen Marie de’ Medici, he moved to Paris, where he would work as a painter to the French court until his death in 1622. 

In his esteemed role as court painter in Mantua, Pourbus the Younger maintained a privileged relationship with the Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga and his family, whose likenesses he captured on several occasions in the very first years of the seventeenth century. The present study should be placed among the portraits Pourbus painted in about 1600-1602 of the Duke’s wife, Duchess Eleonora de’ Medici. In addition to the possible existence of a now-lost full-length portrait of the Duchess that would have complemented the artist’s full-length portrait of the Duke,¹ several other half-length portraits by Pourbus of the Duchess are known, including one in the Pitti Palace, Florence² and another last recorded in 1953 in a Swiss private collection.³ Like these portraits, this oil study on paper records the same striking expression, intense gaze, and single pearl earring of the Duchess, who would have been in her mid-thirties when painted here. With a deft brush, Pourbus quickly and freely captures her likeness, modelling her distinctive features with an innate understanding of the effects of light and shadow. The creamy tones of her face are enlivened by the soft pinks of her rouged cheeks and the pale blues tones at her temple, while quick touches of paint serve as highlights on her upper lip, the bridge of her nose and her inner eyes. The shadows outlining her angular jaw are further enhanced by soft white strokes around her face, mere suggestions of what would become an elaborate ruff in the more complete portraits. A similar freeness of execution and palette are also found in Pourbus’s later head study in oil of Queen Henrietta Maria of France (1609–1669), painted in about 1621 in Paris.⁴

We are grateful to Professor Raffaella Morselli, whose expanded expertise serves as the basis for this catalogue entry and is available upon request. 

¹ Private collection, Rome. Oil on canvas, 202 by 112 cm. B. Ducos, Frans Pourbus le Jeune, 1569-1622 : le portrait d'apparat à l'aube du Grand siècle: entre Habsbourg, Médicis et Bourbons, Dijon 2011, p. 203, cat. no. P.A. 18, reproduced. Although a full-length portrait of the Duchess has yet to be

re-emerge, it seems most likely that the Portrait of the Duchess of Mantua, signed and dated Francesco Pourbus 1602 and formerly in the collection of

Pietro Caminati in Mantua may very well be the now-lost prototype.

² Ducos 2011, pp. 203–204, cat. no. P.A. 19, reproduced p. 204.

³ Ducos 2011, pp. 204–205, cat. no. P.A. 20, reproduced p. 205.

⁴ Oil on canvas, 30.5 by 25 cm., sold, New York, Christie’s, 10 June 2022, lot 30, for $226,800.