Lot Essay
The History Portraits were executed mainly in Rome, over a period of two months, in a studio in Trastevere which was given to the artist as a kind of residence fellowship. Most were made from reproductions in books of French or Italian portraits...Sherman could as easily have produced these works in New York, though as she put it, Rome was good for her "research," which consisted in finding simulacra of what people actually wore in the pictures, looking through the flea market at the Porto Portese for fabric and props she might have been hard pressed to find in New York (A. Danto, op. cit., p. 11).