Portrait of a Young Lady Holding a Cat
‘Portrait of a Young Lady Holding a Cat’ is a painting by the Florentine Renaissance artist Antonio d’Ubertino Verdi (known as Bacchiacca), sold through Nicholas Hall to a private collection.
PROVENANCE
Charles Loeser (1864–1928), Florence, by 1890
Private collection, Florence (possibly Benedetti), Florence
with French & Co., New York, 1981; sold at
Christie’s, New York, Important Old Master Paintings Part I, 12 January 1996, lot 187
Christie’s, New York, Renaissance Sale, 30 January 2013, lot 151
Private Collection, USA
with Nicholas Hall, New York, 2019; sold to
Private Collection
LITERATURE
Le Triomphe du Manierisme Européen de Michelange au Gréco, Amsterdam, 1955, exh. cat., p. 48–49, under no. 15 (as Francesco).
Lada Nikolenko, Francesco Ubertini Called Il Bacchiacca, Locust Valley, 1966, pp. 19, 52, reproduced fig. 50 (as Francesco).
Gertrude Rosenthal, ed., Italian Paintings, XIV-XVIIIth centuries from the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, 1981, p. 94 (as Francesco).
Carl Nordenfalk, ‘The Five Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, London, 1985, XLVIII, p. 17, reproduced pl. 7b (as Francesco).
Charles D. Colbert, Bacchiacca in the Context of Florentine Art, Cambridge, 1978, PhD diss., pp. 77, 113 (as possibly Carlo).
Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, I Cinque Sensi nell’Arte ‘Immagini del Sentire’, Venice, 1996, reproduced p. 92 (as Francesco)
Robert G. La France, Franceso d’Ubertino Verdi, il Bachiacca, 1494-1557: ‘Diligente Dipintore’, New York, 2002, PhD diss., pp. 566–68, reproduced no. 109 (as possibly Antonio).
Robert G. La France, Bacchiacca, Artist of the Medici Court, Florence, 2008, pp. 286–87, no. 128, reproduced fig. 88 (as Verdi studio, Antonio).
Essay
The latest catalogue raisonné of the Italian Renaissance painter Francesco Ubertini, called il Bacchiacca published by Robert La France in 2008 made great strides in distinguishing the work of Francesco from that of other members of his family, notably his younger brother Antonio to whom La France attributes the present painting, formerly given to Francesco. Antonio was born in 1499 and joined the painters guild in Florence in 1532. By 1542 he was working at the Medici court along with his brother but primarily as an embroiderer. His success in this field is confirmed in a laudatory sonnet written by the Florentine humanist Benedetto Varchi in which the latter states that after him (Antonio) major artists would be minor. However, Antonio is often described as a painter, indicating that, like many artists of his time, he worked in diverse media.
The Portrait of a Young Lady Holding a Cat is strongly reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Lady with an Ermine of circa 1490 (fig. 1), thought to represent Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Bacchiacca’s lady is more coquettish and the cat, an animal associated with lust and sensuality, is calmer and less restless than Leonardo’s ermine. Her seductive expression, jewelry and above all her yellow dress (a color under current sumptuary laws associated with prostitution) has led some to identify her with Pantasilia, a Roman courtesan with whom, according to Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco Bacchiacca was hopelessly smitten. This is a beguiling idea, but it is also possible she represents a generic image of seductive beauty, as in the celebrated portraits of beautiful women by Titian and Palma Vecchio. Her elaborate coiffeur seems to have been inspired by Michelangelo’s drawings of divine heads, notably an example in the Prints and Drawings cabinet of the Uffizi which shows a bare-breasted woman in profile (inv. no. 598 Er). Her face, seen in three-quarter profile, is close to Francesco Bacchiacca’s Mary Magdalene of circa 1530 (fig. 2) in the Pitti Palace (La France, cat. no. 50). La France describes the present painting as a high-quality work from the studio of Francesco, before proposing the current attribution. He also believes the painting to be by the same hand as the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist in Dresden and the Annunciation with Saints in the museum of Colle di Val d’Elsa (La France, cat. nos. 129 and 130). He further suggests the last two paintings and the Portrait of a Young Lady Holding a Cat should form the basis for more attributions to Antonio, citing particular affinities in the execution of the female profiles and their coiffeurs.
In the 19th century, the Portrait of a Young Lady Holding a Cat was owned by the great connoisseur and American expatriate Charles Loeser, a friend and fellow Harvard graduate of Bernard Berenson. The son of a Brooklyn department store magnate, Charles Loeser devoted his life to the study and collecting of art. His Old Master drawings were bequeathed to the Fogg Museum at Harvard University whilst his large collection of Renaissance paintings and objects were given to the city of Florence. In addition, Loeser was a collector of the works of Paul Cézanne, a living artists at the time. Eight works by Cézanne were given to the White House in Washington, D.C. at his death.❖