This captivating, rediscovered portrait is a significant addition to the corpus of one of the leading Italian artists of the Late Renaissance: Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino.  Datable to about 1527, the painting is one of the earliest instances of Bronzino’s dual exploration of portraiture, a genre that would define much of his career, and poetry, an academic endeavor he simultaneously pursued.  In remarkably beautiful condition and with unbroken provenance from the seventeenth century until the present, this portrait’s recent reemergence allows a greater appreciation of the artistic and poetic virtuosity already established by Bronzino in his youth.  Refined, elegant, and intellectually complex, it is a masterpiece of the Florentine Cinquecento.

The handsome, brown-haired young man, likely in his mid-twenties, is placed before a simple green background. Dressed in a dark cost.mes cinched at the waist, he engages the viewer with a confident and alluring gaze. His softly modeled features, lit from the left, are distinctly defined beneath a jauntily cocked cap: faint silvery eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, a strong jaw, and a prominent but slightly upturned nose. Subtle gradations of blacks enrich his attire and accentuate his elongated figure, as the crisp white blouse at his collar and wrists offset his skin’s creamy tones. In his right hand, between his thumb and forefinger, he holds a quill, the tip of which is still soaked in fresh ink. With his other hand, he points to an unfolded sheet of paper that rests on the wooden table before him, a gesture that invites the viewer to read a Latin quatrain. Next to this stands an inkwell, precariously but perfectly balanced on a metal pin, with its dislodged cap nearby.

Bronzino was one of the most important artists of the Italian maniera, whom Vasari described as “truly most rare and worthy of all praise.” Born in a Florentine suburb in 1503, Bronzino was apprenticed by 1517-1518 to Jacopo da Pontormo, a near-contemporary who would remain a friend and mentor for decades. From 1523-1526, the two artists worked together on the decorations for the cloister at the Certosa in Galluzzo, near Florence, and in 1527 collaborated on the Capponi Chapel at the Florentine Church of Santa Felicita. By this t.mes , Bronzino already demonstrated a certain degree of independence from his teacher, and he would continue to develop his individual style after he left a besieged Florence for Pesaro in 1530, returning to his native city only in 1532. With the establishment of the Medici in the years that followed, Bronzino assumed his position as court portraitist–a position that secured his success for the remainder of his career. In addition to the artist’s painterly proclivities, he was also celebrated among his contemporaries as an accomplished and witty poet, and this portrait may be one of the earliest recorded references to his poetic endeavors.¹

From its inception until it entered the collects ion of Sir William Temple (1628-1699), this painting maintained its correct attribution to Bronzino, a significant fact considering that the artist had by the seventeenth century gone out of vogue. This attribution remained intact until the early 1900s, when the artist’s unclear position within art historical discourse obscured the work’s autograph status, subsequently leading to erroneous attributions of Salviati, the name once ascribed also to Bronzino’s Portrait of Lodovico Capponi at the Frick collects ion (fig. 1),² and Jacopino del Conte. Having only recently resurfaced, this portrait has now been justly returned to the hand of Bronzino.

In recent decades, a number of rediscoveries and reattributions have facilitated a critical reexamination of Bronzino’s oeuvre.³ They have permitted a better understanding of Bronzino’s varied stylistic impulses, not confined solely to a cool and courtly Mannerist brush, but rather showing myriad artistic, intellectual, and poetic currents. In particular, a more nuanced examination of Bronzino’s early career, prior to the siege of Florence in 1529-1530 and the rise of the Medici court in the years to follow, has illuminated a distinct body of work executed during his artistic naissance. It is to this early group that the present portrait belongs.

Although several works that now define Bronzino’s early corpus were once mistakenly attributed to Pontormo, Bronzino’s youthful, confident hand has recently been restored to many paintings in this group. Among these works are Bronzino’s Holy Family (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., fig. 2),⁴ Portrait of a Young Man with a Book formerly in the Corsini collects ion (fig. 3),⁵ Portrait of a Lady in Red with a Dog (Städel Museum, Frankfurt, fig. 4),⁶ and Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi (Castello Sforzesco, Milan fig. 5).⁷ Like these paintings, the present portrait exhibits an awareness of Pontormo, as visible, for example, in the fluid and the liquid rendering of the man’s dark fabrics, which recall the sitters’ cost.mes s in Pontormo’s Portrait of Two Friends in the Cini Foundation (fig. 6).⁸ Yet, the particularly subtle rendering of light in the present painting allows Bronzino to impart his figure with greater solidity and enables him to capture materials with a degree of tactility rarely achieved by Pontormo, who tended toward a more abstract rendering of surfaces. Bronzino’s fervent interest in form and material would eventually culminate in the remarkable virtuosity that defines his Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo and her Son Giovanni in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence (fig. 7).⁹

In style and date, the present portrait should be most closely aligned with Bronzino’s Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi, completed about 1527-1528 (fig. 5).¹⁰ During the 1527 outbreak of the plague in Florence, Lorenzo and a small group of like-minded friends relocated to the villa of Ugo della Stufa in Bivigliano. Lenzi decamped there with his younger brother, probably Alessandro, and tutor, Annibale Caro, and was almost certainly joined also by Benedetto Varchi and Bronzino. Both portraits share distinct compositional affinities: a single substantial figure set against a uniformly simple green background, a distinct light source shining from the upper left, a strong psychological presence, and the inclusion of a text written in nearly identical script. The present portrait, though, should perhaps be considered to predate the Lenzi portrait, for the work still possesses a slightly more Pontormesque feel, with less attention given to the representations of materials, as seen most overtly in the raised texture of Lenzi’s woolen coat. Additional visual parallels connect this portrait with other early examples by Bronzino. For example, the young man’s cylindrical hands and round fingernails, which differ markedly from the attenuated hands that feature in Pontormo’s portraits, call to mind those in the Portrait of the Woman in Red in the Städel Museum and the Portrait of the Woman in Green in the Royal collects ion;¹¹ Bronzino’s portrayal of a suspended moment of writing, moreover, corresponds to his Corsini portrait.

As previously mentioned, the present panel seems to predate Bronzino’s 1530 departure for Pesaro, where he would both absorb the classical influences of Rome and encounter the works of Dosso Dossi. As evidenced in the artist’s 1532 Portrait of Guidobaldo della Rovere (fig. 8),¹² characterized by a life-filled physiognomy and distinct eyes, by this period Bronzino had begun to employ a more vibrant, confident, and naturalistic artistic vocabulary. With the advent of the Medici court in the 1530s, Bronzino’s painterly aesthetic developed considerably, demonstrated by his Young Man with the Lute (1532-1534),¹³ Portrait of Bartolomeo Panciatichi (1534),¹⁴ and Young Man with a Book (1534-1538, fig. 9).¹⁵ In these paintings, Bronzino’s regular and rigorous forms seem to reach fruition before Cosimo I de’ Medici ascended to power in 1537.

Technical imagery further supports this panel’s early dating. This portrait (fig. 10) and the portrait of Lenzi share identical modes of preparation: trace underdrawing, executed with confidence and security of line, define the lines of the sitters faces. This may suggest that Bronzino initially executed a now lost modello, similar, for example, to the preparatory study today at the Getty for the artist’s Portrait of a Young Man in the Nelson Atkins Museum.¹⁶ Furthermore, the underdrawing in the present portrait shares a uniformly light but deliberate delineation of details with the Lenzi and Städel portraits, all rendered delicate precision, particularly evident in the figures’ eyes and mouths.

Technical imaging has also revealed some notable shifts in the present portrait’s design, especially in the lower left register (fig. 11). The artist, for example, has shifted the position of the young man’s fingers, an adjustment necessary to facilitate the changes made to the paper’s size and position; Bronzino rotated the sheet toward the viewer and expanded it several t.mes s. Such shifts increase the text’s legibility and thus more seamlessly communicate the young man’s thoughts to the viewer.

Word and Image

The young man portrayed here is interrupted in a moment of writing. With a gentle but direct gaze, he gestures toward the verses on the page before him:

Cogitat ut scribat, verum ut non scribat imago

Sponte sua scribit, sed neque sponte id agit

Ergo invita facit minimè nam scribere tantum

Destinat, ulterius, scribere, ne sit opus

Translation:

The image thinks to write but in fact it does not write

It writes of its own accord but it does not act of its own accord

Therefore, it does so unwillingly and writes as little as possible

It intends to write, so that it is not necessary to write further

This complex philosophical text highlights the dialogue between word and image: between the contemplation of writing and the action of painting, between thinking and doing. The subject of the poem is the image itself, the imago.  Meanwhile, the sitter within that very image quite literally points to this dialectic between the activity of a person writing and the painting that exists beyond the boundaries of the written word. Bronzino thus explores the conventions of early sixteenth century Florentine portraiture, by playing on the idea that the thoughts of the portrayed can more aptly be conveyed through objects or gestures, rather than physiognomic likeness alone.

This particular paragone (a comparison among the arts) interestingly anticipates ideas later explored by Benedetto Varchi in his Disputa sulla maggioranza delle arte and similar debates he instigated within the Accademia Fiorentina. It is not surprising to find an exploration of this dichotomy in a work by Bronzino, an artist and intellectual who was well-versed in the scholarly and artistic discussions of the period. This favored artistic conceit would later be most fully realized in his post-1555 portrait of Laura Battiferri, Bronzino’s muse and friend, and herself a poet (fig. 12).¹⁷

Apart from the complexity of the text, other punning elements in the present painting allude to and underscore the nuanced nature of this paragone.  The inkwell in the foreground seems to balance on a metal pin, almost like a spinning top. Rather than embedded in the wooden table, it rests perilously, as if on the verge of tipping over. The shadow it casts on the table highlights the vessel’s precarious balance. Indeed, the inkwell may serve as a metaphor for the choice before the young man: whether to devote himself to a life of the mind (writing and cognition) or to a life of action (painting).

The Sitter

The identity of the elegant, decidedly intellectual man, probably in his early twenties, remains difficult to pin down. A later inscription on the panel’s reverse erroneously identifies the sitter as the Florentine philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494),¹⁸ a contemporary of the artist Sandro Botticelli who lived several decades prior to the portrait’s completion and who was part of Lorenzo the Magnificent's intellectual coterie.

In comparison to other early portraits by Bronzino, the relatively modest dimensions of the present panel and the somewhat simple attire of the young man suggest it may have been a private, unofficial project, for one of his close confidants or friends.¹⁹ One potential candidate could be Annibale Caro, the tutor of Lorenzo Lenzi. Bronzino knew Caro and they may have spent t.mes together in the late 1520s, around the t.mes this portrait was executed. In a 1562 letter, Caro noted that both Bronzino and Salviati had painted his portrait decades before when he was very young; however, in each case the painting was only of a head, suggesting Caro was not describings a portrait of the present size and grandeur.²⁰ Apart from Benedetto Varchi, whose likeness is well known and does not accord with the present image, another possibility might be Antonio Francesco Grazzini (1503-1584), known among his contemporaries by the nickname “Il Lasca.” One of the founders of the Accademia degli Umidi (later Accademia Fiorentina), Lasca was a prominent Florentine literary figure who, like Bronzino, maintained a passion for poetry. Lasca’s appearance, however, is known from several engravings and differs markedly from that of the present sitter. Moreover, the choice of Latin in the present portrait makes Lasca an unlikely identification since he repeatedly claimed ignorance of the language.

Another possibility recently suggested by Carlo Falciani is that the painting may be a self-portrait of Bronzino. The young artist would have been in his early twenties in the late 1520s, the work’s proposed dating. Like Pontormo, Bronzino was fluent in Latin, as evidenced by his inclusion of the Latinized form of his name “Angeli Bronzini Pictoris” and other autograph Latin annotations in the margin of a fifteenth century copy of Supplementunm chronicarum written by the Augustinian monk Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis. Furthermore, the conceit of writing and painting fascinated not only Varchi and Caro, but also Bronzino. Perhaps their t.mes together in Bivigliano amplified Bronzino’s desire to express himself through both word and image, a central conceit in this work.

Unfortunately, comparisons with Bronzino’s physiognomy are difficult. The artist had copper-toned hair, but very few secure likenesses of him are known. While various self-portraits, all embedded within larger works have been proposed,²¹ the only securely documented depiction of Bronzino is the self-portrait he includes in his 1569 Martyrdom of San Lorenzo fresco in the Florentine Church of San Lorenzo. There, the grey-haired artist, aged about 66, is situated at the composition’s left edge (fig. 13). Although the difference in age precludes a direct comparison with the present portrait, he captures his likeness not holding a brush, but rather a black-tipped pen, seemingly declaring the importance of the written word in figural expression.

Provenance

While the commission and earliest history of this portrait remains to be discovered, it is first recorded in the collects ion of Sir William Temple (1628-1699), a prominent diplomat, politician, and essayist, whose likeness was captured by the Dutch artist Caspar Netscher (fig. 14).²² Temple traveled regularly between the Netherlands and England, briefly served as an advisor to Charles II, and supported the author Jonathan Swift. Among Temple’s many passions, he particularly enjoyed art and poetry, and it was in his collects ion that this portrait was first considered a likeness of the poet Pico della Mirandola.²³ According to his sister, Martha Gifford, Temple was very pecuniary with his spending, reserving extravagant purchases for his paintings collects ion.²⁴ Although it is unknown when and from whom this portrait entered the collects ion of Sir William Temple, it is noteworthy that even then, when the artist was relatively unknown to collects ors and scholars, it was fully attributed to Bronzino. Like much of Temple’s valuable collects ion, the present portrait descended in his family until it was sold at Christie’s on 30 March 1824.²⁵ The title page of that catalogue draws particular attention to several pictures, the first among them “a portrait of the celebrated Pico di Mirandola, by Bronzino, accompanied by a Latin Epigram, a picture of great.mes rit and rarity.”²⁶

The portrait was acquired in that 1824 sale by Henry Seymour (1776-1849) of Knoyle House in Wiltshire for his own collects ion which would have already included several other masterpieces, including Quinten Massys' The Ugly Duchess (fig. 15).²⁷ The present painting then descended with the other pictures in his collects ion to his eldest son, Henry Danby Seymour (1820-1877), an avid collects or who enhanced the collects ion he inherited by acquiring more Old Masters, such as Albrecht Dürer’s Peasant Woman in the British Museum.²⁸ Upon Henry Danby’s death, the collects ion passed to his younger brother, Alfred Seymour (1824-1888). After Alfred’s death in 1888, the painting passed to his wife, Isabella Leighton (1834-1911), whose handwritten collects ion label remains on the panel’s reverse (fig. 16).²⁹ The portrait then entered the collects ion of their daughter, Jane Margaret Seymour (1873-1943), who sold the painting, still attributed to Bronzino, at Christie’s in 1920. The connoisseur and collects or Hugh Blaker acquired the painting at the 1920 sale, and in 1927 he sold the work to August Mayer. Mayer subsequently sold the work to Julius Böhler for 5000 marks in July 1927 as a work of Francesco Salviati, an attributional shift that prompted the work’s later fall into obscurity.

On 5 October 1927, Ilse Hesselberger (née Wertheim, fig. 17), heir to the Wertheim Sewing Machine fortune, purchased this portrait, still ascribed to Salviati. Born in Frankfurt in 1888, Ilse married Franz Hesselberger in 1908, and the two lived together in Munich. Franz eventually became the sole proprietor of Gebrüder Hesselberger–a successful Munich business that produced leather products ranging from industrial drive belts to wallets. On their marriage, the Hesselbergers moved to the Prinz Georg Palais on Karolinenplatz in central Munich. Franz was a passionate hunter and bibliophile; Ilse was an avid art collects or.

Ilse’s daughter, Trudy, recalled her mother as a highly intelligent socialite, a little haughty and very well known in Munich society, particularly famous for her lavish parties. Ilse’s neighbor in the Prinz Georg Palais was Elsa Bruckmann, who hosted one of the best-known intellectual salons in Munich to which she invited leading politicians, artists, and business leaders. Elsa was an early adopter of the Nazi message and introduced Adolf Hitler into Munich society through her salon. It is said that the future Führer and Ilse Hesselberger met in the hallway outside Elsa’s apartment.

Franz Hesselberger was one of the founders of the Munich Rotary Club of Munich (est. 1928), and after the Nazis came to power, he, and all Jewish members except Thomas Mann, were expelled from the club. This, in tandem with restrictions placed on Hesselberger and his businesses, as well as the after-effects of a serious car crash, affected him greatly, and he died in 1936. After his death the Gebrüder Hesselberger factory closed and was turned over to the Jewish community for use as a technical college chartered to teach skills that would increase the chances of getting a visa to leave Germany.

Around this t.mes , Ilse retreated to their sixty-two hectare estate in Sauerlach, a municipality in Munich. In August 1938, she and Trudy drove to Milan for the first leg of their flight to New York. Ilse, however, missing her friends and her home, decided to return to Munich. Her situation quickly turned to tragedy, and she was forced by the Nazis to sell her property to raise funds. In 1938, the Sauerlach estate was sold to Margarete Ohnesorge, the wife of the Reich Post Minister, and Ilse’s city properties were confiscated and liquidated soon thereafter. The present portrait was sold around this t.mes . Ilse was persuaded that she would be allowed to leave Germany if she made a large contribution to fund the construction of the Milbertshofen transit camp. She made the donation in October 1941 to no avail. In November 1941, she was placed on the first deportation train to the Kaunas Concentration Camp and was murdered upon her arrival at the age of fifty-one. The Cuban exit visa arranged by her daughter arrived mere days after her execution.

As a consequence of Ilse’s persecution, the portrait passed through the hands of three closely connected Munich dealers and Nazi sympathizers: Ludwig Bretschneider, Maria Gillhausen, and Karl Seuffer. It was from the latter that Gerdy Troost—Adolf Hitler’s favored interior designer who was heavily involved in choosing pictures for the Reich Chancellery and for Hitler’s proposed Führermuseum in Linz—acquired the work on 28 January 1941 for RM 55,000. The painting was accessioned by the latter (inv. no. 1400) as a portrait of a humanist by Jacopino del Conte, a name attributed possibly to the work by Hermann Voss, later director of the Sonderauftrag Linz, who had published on this Florentine artist. This erroneous attribution remained associated with this painting for much of the last century, until its recent reemergence. Now, decades later, the work can rightly take its place again within Bronzino’s oeuvre, and its ownership by Ilse Hesselberger can be rightly reinstated into its significant provenance and fascinating history.

We are grateful to Carlo Falciani for his assistance cataloguing this lot.  His essay “Cogitat ut scribat:” Un nuovo (auto?)ritratto del Bronzino, to be published in Paragone in Spring of 2023, forms the basis for much of this catalogue entry.

We are also grateful to the following for their assistance in clarifying the provenance of the present work:  Janne Weinzierl, contributer to ausgegrenzt – entrechtet – deportiert. Schwabings und Schwabings er Schicksale 1933 bis 1945, I. Macek (ed.), Munich 2008; and Suzanne Higgott, Curator of Glass, Limoges, Painted Enamels, Earthenwares, and Renaissance Furniture at the Wallace collects ion.

We are also grateful to the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte for their assistance in clarifying the provenance of this work.  

1. Bronzino’s earliest known written poetry postdates his 1532 return to Florence from Pesaro. See C. Mutini’s introduction in Agnolo Bronzino, Rime in burla, F. Petrucci Nardelli (ed.), Rome 1988, pp. 2, 498-499.

2. Inv. no. 1915.1.19, oil on panel, 116.5 by 85.7 cm. See A. McComb, Agnolo Bronzino, His Life and Works, Cambridge MA 1928, p. 115, reproduced plate 57.

3. These rediscoveries and reattributions, among others, include Bronzino’s Crucifixion painted for Bartolomeo Panciatichi (P. Costamagna and C. Falciani, “Le Christ en Croix d'Agnolo Bronzino peint pour Bartolomeo Panciatichi,” in Revue de l’Art 168 (2010-2012), pp. 45-52) and his Madonna and Child with Saint John, now in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

4. Inv. no. 1939.1.387, oil on panel, 101.3 by 78.7 cm.

5. Anonymous sale (“Property of a Private collects or”), New York, Christie’s, 27 January 2015, lot 129.

6. Inv. no. 1136, oil on poplar panel, 89.8 by 70.5 cm. https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/portrait-of-a-lady-in-red

7. Inv. no. P 547, oil on panel, 90 by 71 cm.

8. Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Galleria di Palazzo Cini, inv. no. 40025, oil on panel, 88 by 67.5 cm.

9. Inv. no. 1890 no. 748, oil on panel, 115 by 96 cm.

10. On the stay in Bivigliano and on a date of 1528, see A. Cecchi, “’Famose frondi de cui santi honori …’, un sonetto del Varchi e il ritratto di Lorenzo Lenzi del Bronzino,” in Artista 2 (1990), pp. 8-19. Of a different opinion is E. Cropper, who proposes a date after Bronzino’s stay in Pesaro, see “Per una lettura dei ritratti fiorentini del Bronzino,” in Bronzino. Pittore e poeta alla corte de Medici, exhibition catalogue, Florence 2010, pp. 246-247. For an updated bibliography on the painting see J. Siemon 's entry in Medici Portraits and Politics 1512-1570, exhibition catalogue, K. Christiansen and C. Falciani (eds.), New York 2021, pp. 172-174.

11. Inv. no. RCIN 405754, oil on poplar panel, 76.6 by 66.2 cm.

12. Florence, Palazzo Pitti, inv. 1912 149, oil on panel, 114 by 86 cm.

13. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. 1890 no. 1575, oil on panel, 98 by 83 cm.

14. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. 1890 no. 741, oil on panel, 104 by 84 cm.

15. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 29.100.16, oil on panel, 95.6 by 74.9 cm.

16. Los Angeles, Getty Museum, inv. no. 90.GB.29, black chalk on paper, 13.8 by 10.3 cm.; Kansas City, Nelson Atkins Museum, inv. no. 49-28, oil on panel, 85.7 by 68.6 cm.

17. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, inv. no. MCF-LOE 1933.17, oil on panel, 87.5 by 70 cm.

18. The inscription reads: Picus de Mirandula: Phoenix mundi.

19. The present panel’s height (77.5 cm), is smaller than the Portrait of a Young Man formerly in the Corsini collects ion, the Lenzi Portrait, and the Portrait of the Lady in Red, all of which measure between 92 and 96 cm high.

20. A. Caro, Family Letters, A. Greco (ed.), Florence 1957-1961, vol. III, p. 95.

21. Janet Rearick Cox, for example, has proposed that Bronzino included himself as the figure draped in blue at the foot of the Duchess in his 1542 fresco. Passage of the Red Sea in the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio. See J. Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio, Berkeley 1993, pp. 204-212. It has also been suggested that Bronzino recorded himself as the figure of David, the writer of the Psalms, depicted draped in blue and with an arm outstretched in the upper left corner of his Descent of Christ into Limbo, painted in 1552 for the Medici Chapel, Santa Croce.

22. London, National Portrait Gallery, London, inv. no. NPG 3812.  

23. The inscription on the verso ‘Picus de Mirandula, Phœnix Mundi’ reflects the spelling of the poet’s name used by Temple in his writings. In his essay ‘Of Ancient and Modern Learning’, Temple wrote “…Picus de Mirandula, a sovereign Prince in Italy, might have proved a prodigy of learning, if his studies and life had lasted as long as those of the ancients: for I think all of them that writ much of what we have now remaining, lived old, whereas he died about three and thirty, and left the world in admiration of so much knowledge in so much youth.” Sir William Temple, Complete Works, vol. IV, London 1814, p. 482.

24. M. Giffard (“A particular friend”), The Life and Character of Sir William Temple, bart, London 1728, p. 22: “…and the presents made him in his several Embassies, were chiefly laid out in Building and Planting, and In purchasing old Statues, and Pictures, that still remain in his Family, which were his only Expence, or Extravagance, but not too great for his Income.”

25. The title of this sale was: “A Catalogue of a Valuable and Exceedingly Interesting Assemblage of Italian, Flemish, and Other Pictures and Some Antique Marbles, formerly collects ed by Sir William Temple.”

26. Other works of note included “a Portrait by A. del Sarto, an original Portrait of Henrietta Maria, by V. Dyck, and others highly finished by Netscher…”

27. London, National Gallery, inv. no. NG5769, oil on oak panel, 64.2 by 45.5 cm. For full provenance on Massys’s painting, see L. Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues:  The Sixteenth Century, Netherlandish Paintings with French Paintings Before 1600, London 2014, p. 446.

28. London, British Museum, inv. no. 190,0324.1. pen and brown ink and brown wash on paper, 41.6 by 28.1 cm.

29. The handwritten label reads: Mrs Alfred Seymour No 3 / Portrait of Pico / Mirandola (un…) / 1894 / July 30 p409.