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Catalog
A selection by: DAGUERRE PARIS
FLORENTINE SCHOOL circa 1600, entourage of Andrea COMMODI
Po…
See original version (French)
FLORENTINE SCHOOL circa 1600, entourage of Andrea COMMODI
Po…
See original version (French)
Lot no. 7
Description
FLORENTINE SCHOOL circa 1600, entourage of Andrea COMMODI
Portrait of a woman with a wide lace collar
Poplar panel, parqueted
55.5 x 41 cm
Framed at bust level, the model stands out against an olive green background. The frontal position and the
The frontal position and the almost neutral, smooth style, with no material effects, contrast with the highly refined and precise elements, such as the openwork lace collar, the embroidery on the coat, the detail of the fishnet in the hair, and the jewellery featuring a horse.
This type of representation derives from the aristocratic ceremonial portraits painted by Bronzino and his school, Alessandro Allori, Santi di Tito and Maso da San Friano. Our painting is similar to Portrait of a Young Woman by Andrea Commodi (1560-1638), acquired by the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse in 2021 (fig. 1). This kind of timeless painting (senza tempo, to use Federico Zeri's term) was practised at the end of Mannerism, even outside Florence in Italy: the portrait drawings of Ottavio Leoni spring to mind.
However, our work stands out from the usual production of this period because of the very marked physical type of the model, whose origin is hard to pin down. Her features appear to us to be those of a woman from southern Europe rather than the Philippines, South America or of mixed race. There are few clues to determine her age or social status, apart from the refinement of her dress and her jewellery, including the earring and pendant with the Paschal lamb. Her thick, black hair is tied back in a bun, although the painter did show some fine strands escaping from it.
At the turn of the 1600s, painters were sometimes interested in depicting unusual physical characters. Examples include studies of women by Bartolomeo Passarotti and portraits of the little girl Antonietta Gonsalvus, suffering from hypertrichosis, by Lavinia Fontana (Blois, Musée du Château Royal and Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art), both Bologna painters. The Portrait of an African Woman (fig. 2) in the Louvre Abu Dhabi, once attributed to Annibale Carracci, is now listed by the museum as belonging to the Florentine school circa 1560. This is supported by the fact that it was painted by a painter from Bologna.
supported by the fact that she is wearing clothes in vogue at the Medici court.
A certain modernity is given to this image by the geometric layout, constructed by the almost abstract interplay of the two white triangles of the collar standing out against the dark dress, and the neckline closing the same polygon. The hieratic composition, the brown skin and the very pronounced black eyebrows, emphasising the line of the arch of the eyebrow, evoke, three centuries later, the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo (fig. 3).
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