Portrait of Bianca Lucia Aliprandi, née Crivelli, three-quarter-length, in a black brocade dress, with a jewelled necklace and fur muff

Lavinia Fontana was the first of a number of woman artists in Bologna to achieve both national and international renown. She trained in the workshop of her father, Prospero Fontana, a leading exponent of Mannerism in Bologna, a city of vibrant cultural exchange and erudition in the sixteenth century. She became the first woman to be commissioned with a major altarpiece, The Assumption of Ponte Santo, 1584, ordered by the consiglio comunale of Imola (now Imola, Pinacoteca Civica) and would play a key role in shaping the identity of the female artist, with her landmark self-portraits (in the Accademia di San Luca, Rome and the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), following in the footsteps of Properzia de’ Rossi, a leading sculptor in Bologna during the High Renaissance. As she established herself as an independent artist, she gained fame and distinction as a portrait painter in her native city and beyond, and by the 1580s she was receiving important commissions from eminent families such as the Orsini and the Gozzadini. She seems to have been drawn particularly to female sitters, detailing the exquisite costumes, jewellery and hairstyles of her subjects with verve, just as she does here in this newly discovered portrait. It shows a young Milanese noblewoman, Bianca Aliprandi née Crivelli, dressed in the fashion of the moment: with her hair gathered up and decorated with a row of ribbons, she wears an opulent necklace and a table-cut diamond ring on her index finger.
The coat-of-arms in the upper right provides the key to the identity of the sitter. The oval shield, inside the cartouche, shows two families’ arms impaled, representing the union in marriage of the Houses of Aliprandi and Crivelli - left and right in the shield respectively. These were two historic Milanese families whose origins dated back to the Middle Ages, and the portrait in question shows a member of the Crivelli family: Bianca Lucia, the wife of Marcantonio Aliprandi. Recent archival research has shown that Bianca was born between late 1588 and early 1589, the legitimated daughter of Giovan Ambrogio Giuseppe, a significant benefactor of the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan, and a household servant, Isabella de Massalia. Further documents unearthed in the register of the Ospedale Maggiore show that Bianca married Marcantonio Aliprandi on 28 May 1602. The portrait, then, likely dates to the time of her wedding, and before Lavinia’s move to Rome in 1603-4, where she worked for Pope Paul V; at the time this portrait was completed, she was at the height of her career. Comparisons can be drawn with other portraits from around the same period, including the Portrait of a Noblewoman (possibly Isabella Ruini) (Florence, Palazzo Pitti), which is dated 1593, and the Portrait of Ginevra Aldrovandi Hercolani as a Widow, circa 1595-1600 (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum).
The coat-of-arms and the sitter have been identified by Niccolò Orsini De Marzo, and the attribution has been confirmed by Maria Teresa Cantaro, in a private communication to the present owner, after first hand inspection of the picture; the painting will be the subject of a forthcoming publication.