Giulio Romano was trained in Rome by the great Raphael, working with him on the many frescoes in the papal apartments in the late 1510s. Upon Raphael’s unt.mes ly death in 1520, Giulio took over the running of the workshop until 1524, using his master’s drawings to complete the frescoes in the Sala di Costantino and in Villa Madama. Giulio was so adept at working in his master’s style that many works traditionally assumed to be by Raphael have only in the last half century been reassigned to Giulio. While in Rome Giulio also received some important architectural commissions, including Villa Lante and Palazzo Santi Maccarani (now Pallazzo di Brazzà). Before moving to Mantua in 1524 to work for Federico Gonzaga, Giulio executed his most important commission in Rome known as the Fugger Altarpiece, probably from 1522-24, now in the church of Santa Maria dell’Anima, painted for the German banker Jakob Fugger.
‘Ancient in a modern way and modern in an ancient way’
On the basis of style the present portrait has also been dated to the very first few years of the 1520s by both Carlo Falciani and Stefania Pasti. The elegant pearl necklace indicates that the lady must have been of considerable social standing, as the edge of her blouse would also suggest. Falciani specifically compares the sitter’s features with those found in the Portrait of a Woman with a Mirror in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow. The strong use of shadow to create depth is a stylistic feature also found the Fugger altarpiece while the large eyes, described by sharp lines, recall the Pushkin portrait. Falciani also notes that our portrait shows how quickly Giulio was prepared to distance himself from Raphael’s style after the latter’s death: the very deliberate lack of equilibrium in the portrait, with the axis of the design shifted due to the lady’s turned head, would have been inconceivable to Raphael, as would the almost mannered depiction of the chest and neck.
The attribution has been endorsed by Philippe Costamagna, Carlo Falciani and Stefania Pasti. The reports written by Falciani and Pasti are available on request.