Venetian Lady
Mid-XVIIcentury. Oil on canvas.Not on display
The seated model is sumptuously dressed, with silver-lamé collar and cuffs, a pearl choker and a very dark green dress with silver decorations on her skirt and gold ones on the bodice and sleeves. She has flowers in her hair and long earrings. The heavy crimson velvet curtain behind her is echoed by a matching mat on the buffet. The scene opens onto an urban background that recalls the city of Venice, with a felza-covered gondola in the foreground and further back, an imaginary building of Palladian inspiration.
The dress and the face of the lady present a very remarkable resemblance to those of a portrait in the Pardo Collection that participated in the exhibition on Nicolas Régnier held at the Musée d´Arts de Nantes in 2017-2018, attributed to that painter and identification proposal as Maria Farnese d´Este (1615-1646), first wife of Duke Francesco I of Modena (cat. No. 31, circa 1638-1639, oil on canvas, 139 x 108 cm). Neither the authorship of Régnier nor the identification of the lady is convincing, when confronting the canvas of the Pardo Collection, for example, with the certain portrait of Maria Farnese d´Este due to that painter preserved by the Gallerie Estensi in Modena (inv. RCGE 66 , 1638, oil on canvas, 56 x 42 cm). The concept of portraiture and the appearance of the female portrayed in this canvas from the Prado Museum are also close to a work in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, somewhat more meticulous in execution and there attributed to Luca Ferrari (inv. KHM 6537, mid-17th century , oil on canvas, 205 x 115 cm). Despite these indications, however, both the authorship and the identity of the lady represented here remain to be resolved, both of which are probably the same as those of the portrait in the Pardo Collection.