Attestato in collezione Borghese a partire dagli elenchi fidecommissari del 1833, questo ritratto sembra appartenere all'ambiente cremonese, eseguito con buona probabilità intorno alla metà del XVI secolo. La donna, non più in giovane età, è riccamente abbigliata, qui ritratta con una leggera camicia legata sotto il collo, il mantello e la cuffia. Sullo sfondo poco visibile, è un cratere antico, elemento che indica l’appartenenza della donna a un ceto sociale alto.
Salvator Rosa (cm 77,5 x 67,5 x 7)
Roma, collezione Borghese, 1833 (Inventario Fidecommissario 1833, p. 39); Acquisto dello Stato, 1902.
The provenance of this work is still unknown. It is only documented with certainty in the collection of Casino di Porta Pinciana from 1833, when it was described as ‘in the style of Titian’ by the compiler of the Inventario Fidecommissario.
While Adolfo Venturi (1893) attributed it to Bonifacio de’ Pitati, both that name and that of Giovanni Antonio Fasolo (see della Pergola 1955) were rejected by Roberto Longhi (1928), who rather ascribed it to anonymous painter of Cremona active around the mid-16th century.
For her part, Paola della Pergola (1955) was not persuaded by any of these suggestions, publishing the portrait as by an unknown painter of the 16th century. Her proposal was more or less accepted by Kristina Herrmann Fiore (2006), who claimed that it was by a northern Italian artist.
There is no doubt that the quality of this work, which has never been restored, is above average. Its painter was evidently familiar with artistic developments in mid-16th-century Veneto, sensitive to those trends which a generation later would lead to Gervasio Gatti, called Sojaro. Both the fixed gaze of this anonymous noblewoman and the sort of domestic realism of the painting recall several severe figures executed in Cremona in the mid-1500s, hovering between the Roman-Paduan style and that burst of energy from Brescia in the wake of Moroni.
Antonio Iommelli