Portrait of Isabella de Medici discovered Automatic translate

PITTSBURG. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh nearly destroyed a 16th-century Florentine portrait. The picture, recognized as a modern fake, was only sent at the last minute for additional examination.

Left: picture before restoration, right: original portrait. Photo: Carnegie Museum of Art

“I was convinced that this was a common modern fake,” says Lulu Lippincott, curator of the Pittsburgh Museum, referring to the alleged portrait of Eleanor Toledo by Italian mannerist Bronzino. “One look at the picture - and I thought, are you kidding - this is not Bronzino,” she says. Convinced that the work does not belong to the brush of any of the old masters, Lippincott sent the canvas to the museum’s curator Ellen Baxter, enclosing a note in it asking to confirm the fake.

However, Baxter’s response was not what Lippincott expected: “I’m not too sure, this is clearly not Bronzino, but something in this picture does not correspond to what a classic portrait on canvas should be. Something doesn’t fit, ”Baxter told the curator. Having examined the stretcher of the painting, the main keeper noticed the mark of Francis Lidham, a prominent 19th-century British restorer who was famous for his ability to create portraits from damaged group paintings. “Finally, the story began to converge with what we saw,” says Baxter, explaining that she immediately began searching the catalogs for the original, which was probably corrupted and could not be restored.

Lippincott then had to admit that the age of the work was at least 100, and most likely, all 400 years more than she thought when she examined the picture. “That’s when the fun began,” she says.

The real breakthrough came when x-rays showed completely different outlines of a colorful figure, hidden under the top layer of paint. The X-ray also showed that in the hands of the person portrayed before there was an alabaster urn, and around the head there were traces of a halo. This combination is an attribute of Mary Magdalene. The face and hands of the woman depicted on the canvas were rewritten in the 19th century, after the work was framed in a separate canvas. Probably, the restorer decided to give more pretty features of the portrait to make it easier to sell the painting. Lippincott traced the history of the canvas, now attributed to the 19th century, to the collection of railroad tycoon Collis Potter Huntington, most of which went after his death to the New York Metropolitan Museum. Carnegie acquired the painting in 1978.

Lippincott began to focus on the woman’s clothes - the most authentic part of the picture, in order to try to establish her identity. While viewing the catalog of portraits of the Medici family, she found the original canvas. It was a group portrait of a family of Florentine rulers and patrons, and the heroine of the portrait was Isabella de Medici (1542-76), a free-spirited daughter of Eleanor Toledo and Cosimo de Medici. Isabella was strangled by her husband after he found out about her relationship with her cousin. Lippincott believes that the canvas was painted around 1574, and the halo and urn were added later as a symbol of repentance.

Now, after the painting is completely cleared of traces of paint applied in the 19th century, museum workers hope to identify the author of the 16th century painting. This was probably someone from the environment of Alessandro Allori, a leading painter of the Medici court during the 1560s. and 1570s

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru