Lombard School, 17th century

With L'Etagère Antiquities, Paris, 1966;

From whom acquired by John and Johanna Bass, New York;

By whom bequeathed to the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, in 1979 (inv. no. 79.236).

M. Russell, in Paintings and Textiles of the Bass Museum of Art: Selections from the Collection, M. Russell (ed.), Miami Beach 1990, p. 46, reproduced.

This slightly playful seventeenth-century portrait depicts a young woman in the guise of Venus. Accompanied by a semi-blindfolded, bow-brandishing Cupid, the sitter holds an arrow in one hand and an amorous poetic quatrain in the other. The inscription, which indicates that she is only fifteen, reads: “Show your grace and love through beauty, but strike hearts harshly with a lightning bolt.” That is to say, it encourages women to conform to the appearance of the feminine ideal, but to act swiftly and without mercy when it comes to matters of love.

The most elaborate component of the raven-haired woman’s theatrical costume is her headdress: a patterned turban embellished with three pearls, a white feather, and a gold heraldic device. The jewel-like emblem corresponds with the arms of the “De Vertua” family, suggesting the sitter may have been part of the Lombard nobility.