This exquisitely refined and elegant portrait of a beautiful young Roman noblewoman dates to about 1575. The naturalism of her likeness as well as the remarkable details of her cost.mes and facial features are all hallmarks of the hand of Scipione Pulzone, the leading portraitist in Rome in the last few decades of the sixteenth century. Eagerly sought after by many of Italy’s most eminent families, Pulzone painted portraits of popes, cardinals, dukes, nobles, and many of the most beautiful women of the period, as evidenced in this wonderfully preserved example. The sitter’s attire and presence reveal her as a woman of high social standing, and among the various possibilities put forth as to her possible identity, Lavinia della Rovere and Vittoria Accoramboni are perhaps the most compelling.

In this bust-length portrait, a clear and natural light source illuminates a young sitter against a dark background. With her captivating hazel-colored eyes and her faint smile, she engages directly with the viewer. The softness of her delicate features and creamy pale skin, which are enhanced by her rouged cheeks and coral lips, are further complimented by the intricate folds of her fine ruff made of Italian reticella lace.² She is richly attired in a crimson velvet corset with prominent oversleeves embroidered with threads of gold and silver atop an ivory silk dress. Her corset is edged with luminescent pearl buttons whose added base of gold thread lends them a naturalistic acorn shape. Atop her light, golden brown hair, which frames her face with soft curls, is an intricate enameled and jeweled headpiece, near which rests a plume of daisies and feathers as additional flowers are woven into the thin plaits at the back of her head. According to Aileen Ribeiro, the sitter appears to be attired in a Spanish-style cost.mes that was popular in about 1575, the Spanish influence particularly visible in the slits in the oversleeves to reveal her lighter bodice beneath.³

Born in Gaeta, Scipione Pulzone studied under Jacopino del Conte and was largely active throughout his successful career in Rome, where he joined the Accademia di San Luca in 1567. In addition to ecclesiastical commissions, Pulzone specialized as a painter of portraits, and according to his biographer Giovanne Baglione, he had no equal in this realm, particularly in the true and diligent manner with which he brought his sitters alive.⁴ Indeed, Pulzone eschewed the popular Mannerist tendencies in favor of a return to the naturalism championed by artists from generations prior, including Raphael and Titian, and he also absorbed the portraiture style emerging from the Habsburg Court with painters such as Anthonis Mor. His artistic reputation stretched outside of Rome and he travelled several t.mes s in his career to the Aragonese court in Naples and the Medici court in Florence to paint portraits of prominent individuals there. His sitters included the likes of Popes Pius V and Gregory XIII, Cardinals Alessandro Farnese and Giovanni Ricci, aristocratic figures including Ferdinando I de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Juana of Austria, Christine of Lorraine, and Marie de’ Medici, among many others.

Scipione’s authorship of this portrait has been endorsed by several scholars, among them, Dottor Antonio Vannugli and Dr. Barbara Furlotti, to whom we are grateful.⁵ Vannugli draws stylistic comparisons between this work and several other examples by the artist in which he models the facial features of his sitters with a soft and delicate chiaroscuro. Such examples include Pulzone’s 1571 Portrait of a noblewoman in a Swiss private collects ion,⁶ his portrait of a young woman identified by some as Felici Orsini in the Galleria Colonna in Rome (fig. 1),⁷ and his rendering of the young Andrea Cesi in his altarpiece of Maria Immacolata, painted originally for San Bonaventura al Quirinale but today in the Church of San Francesco in Ronciglione.⁸ Jacopo Zucchi, Pulzone’s main rival in Rome in the last quarter of the 16th century, has also been put forth as the possible author of the present portrait, by Dr. Lisa Goldenberg Stoppato.

In her lengthy discussion dedicated to this portrait (see Literature), Dr. Barbara Furlotti proposes that the sitter may be Lavinia della Rovere (1558–1632), one of the two daughters of Guidobaldo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, and Vittoria Farnese, sister of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Lavinia’s beauty was renowned throughout Italy, celebrated even in poems by Torquato Tasso, who praised her dark eyes.⁹ In Dr. Furlotti's analysis, the delicately rendered pearl buttons in the form of acorns on her corset offer subtle visual clues as to her identity, as acorns and oak branches were emblems commonly associated with the Della Rovere family.¹⁰ Despite her beauty and grace, many attempts were made to secure Lavinia a husband, among the most important being a possible arrangement to wed Giacomo Boncampagni (1548–1612), son of Pope Gregory XIII and close friend of Pulzone's. These negotiations took place in 1575, and it is possible that this portrait was commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese as a gift for Giacomo when his niece Lavinia arrived in Rome with her mother in that year.¹¹ Sadly, the marriage negotiations fell apart and Lavinia eventually married Alfonso Felice d’Avalos d’Aquino, Marques of Vasto and Pescara, several years later in 1583 at the age of twenty-five. Although there are no confirmed likenesses of Lavinia as a young woman to compare the present work to, she may be the same woman of a slightly more advanced age that appears in a portrait attributed to Federico Barocci in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (fig. 2).¹²

Antonio Vannugli and Dr. Lisa Goldenberg Stoppato have posited that the sitter may be Vittoria Accoramboni (1557–1585), an Italian noblewoman whose beauty and charm made her irresistible to many. Her life met a tragic end, for she was murdered after disputes over the will of her recently deceased second husband, the Duke of Bracciano (Paolo Giordano Orsini). Her fame and reputation, however, lived on long after her death. Vannugli first compared the likeness of the woman in the present portrait to a painting in the Peterhof Museum, St. Petersburg, which bears an inscription along the upper edge that reads Victoria Corombona. 

Although the identity of the beautiful young woman remains an intriguing point of discussion,¹³ this exceptionally well-preserved portrait serves as a test.mes nt to the remarkable prowess of one of the greatest Italian portraitists of his age.

¹ R. Borghini, Il Riposo, L.H. Ellis (ed.), Toronto 2007, p. 277.

² The lace identified by Aileen Ribeiro 2011, p. 76.

³ Ribeiro 2011, pp. 75–76.

⁴ G. Baglione, Le Vite De'Pittori, Scvltori Et Architetti: Dal Pontificato di Gregorio XIII. del 1572. In fino a'tempi di Papa Vrbano Ottauo nel 1642, Rome 1642, p. 53: “non hebbe eguale; e sì vivi li faceva, e con tal diligenza, che vi si sarieno contati fin tutti i capelli, et in particolare li drappi che in quelli ritraheva parevano del loro originale più veri, e davano mirabil gusto.”

⁵ Other scholars in support of the attribution to Scipione Pulzone include Eduard Safarik, Mina Gregori, and Barbara Furlotti, among others.

⁶ A. Dern, Scipione Pulzone, Weimar 2003, pp. 95–96, cat. no. 6, reproduced fig. 3.

⁷ A. Dern, Scipione Pulzone, Weimar 2003, pp. 134–135, cat. no. 37, reproduced fig. 42.

⁸ Dern 2003, pp. 124–125, cat. no. 30, reproduced fig. 34.

⁹ Furlotti 2015, 141.

¹⁰ Emblems of a sitter’s identity are also found in a contemporary portrait by Jacopo Zucchi of Clelia Farnese, who is shown wearing a necklace intertwined with the emblems of her family and that of her husband’s Giovan Giorgio Cesarini.

¹¹ Scipione Pulzone full length portrait of Giacomo Boncapmpagni sold at Christie's New York on 30 January 2013, lot 129, for $7,586,500.

¹² Inv. no. ГЭ-13, oil on canvas, 113.5 x 93.5 cm.

¹³ As noted by Furlotti 2015, Emma Braid-Taylor proposed that the sitter may be Margherita Gonzaga d’Este (1564–1618); Eduard Safarik put forth the idea that it may be a posthumous portrait of Joanna of Aragon (1502–1575).