Portrait of a lady, bust-length in profile, with a string-of-pearls headdress and a grey veil, in a green mantle, holding a medal

Details

Attributed to Vincenzo Catena (?Venice c. 1470/80-1531)
Portrait of a lady, bust-length in profile, with a string-of-pearls headdress and a grey veil, in a green mantle, holding a medal
oil on panel, unframed
23 x 17¾ in. (58.4 x 45.1 cm.)

Provenance

with Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell, London (according to a label on the reverse).
Charles Newton Robinson, London; Lepke, Berlin, 31 March 1914, lot 44, as 'Portrait of Lucrezia Borgia by Ercole Grandi'.
Ms. Olga Schnitzler, Vienna, before 1954.

Literature

T. Borenius, in J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in North Italy, London, 1912, I, p. 262, as 'Catena', in his 'Giorgionesque phase'.
F.J. Mather, 'An Enigmatic Venetian Picture at Detroit', The Art Bulletin, IX, 1927, p. 73.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Annual Report, 1938, p. 5.
G. Robertson, A Study of the Venetian Painter Vincenzo Catena, Edinburgh, 1954, pp. 25 and 52, no. 24, pl. 20, as 'Catena'.

Exhibited

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1938 (lent by Olga Schnitzler) and 1940.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Brought to you by

Elisabeth van Cleef

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Lot Essay

This profile portrait is very close to the one attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo in the painting of a group of three figures in the Detroit Institute of Art, that some scholars judge to be the work of three hands: Giorgione, Titian and Sebastiano. Other art historians consider the painting in Detroit to be by a 17th century pasticheur, and if this is the case, this picture could have served as a model.

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