Stop and Look – Portrait of a Young Woman (1460-65)
You recognise this picture at once. It’s one of the most famous portraits of the Italian Renaissance, yet we don’t know exactly who painted it. We can see that it’s very beautiful, in ways that hardly require demonstrating. It brings to mind that slightly chilling poem by Robert Browning:
“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? …”
Chilling, because it becomes clear as the poem progresses that the Duke has had his wife murdered, and that the portrait he is asking his visitor to admire is a trophy of his art collection, more important in the end than the poor woman herself.
This little panel isn’t “painted on the wall”, of course: it’s a small rectangle of poplar wood. And there’s no reason to suppose Portrait of a Young Woman was commissioned as a souvenir of someone who has been disposed of for some motive of political or sexual jealousy. No, quite simply, “there she stands”, or rather, it seems, “sits” — but we can’t doubt it was for the owner’s pleasure, as it remains for us today. There’s an odd contrast between the statuesque formality of the composition, the clarity of the silhouette against the nearly cloudless blue sky and the almost casual pose, as the unidentified model leans back in dignified ease before a stone balustrade.
There’s also a contrast between the penetrating psychology of this depiction of a cool beauty and the abstraction of the composition itself: the firm but subtle line that traces her neck, her profile, the tightly-wound braids of her blond hair, and the intricate detail of her sumptuously embroidered dress.
“Frà Pandolf” is not a real artist: Browning made him up, but this picture might as well be by someone of that name. Scholars haven’t made up their minds as to an attribution for Portrait of a Young Woman. However, the painter must have been a member of the fifteenth-century Florentine school: the pure lines, the emphasis on crisp design, are characteristic of Florence at the outset of the High Renaissance, and several names have been suggested over the years.
Domenico Veneziano is one, who as his name suggests, was Venetian in origin but worked most of his life in Florence. Domenico Ghirlandaio is another; his portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi (in the Thyssen collection, Madrid), shows her in a very similar profile, also with much attention to the intricate braids of the sitter’s hair.
Then there are the two brothers, Piero and Antonio Pollaiuolo: Antonio is the favoured candidate these days. If you’re in London, you can visit the National Gallery and look at Alessio Baldovinetti’s Portrait of a Lady in Yellow, which is given almost the same date and follows exactly the same general design, showing how popular the format was.
All these artists were developing ideas that had come into Italy with the rediscovery of the civilisation of ancient Rome. Their Nativity scenes began to be set among classical ruins, and their portraits often took the form of profiles like those of emperors found on Roman coins. The Italians’ contemporaries in northern Europe, Dürer among them, also painted penetrating portraits but in a more realistic, less idealising style. Once the idea of the profile had been adopted in Italy, it could be adapted to many purposes, including the celebration of beautiful woman. So that although this young lady wears fashionable fifteenth-century clothes, she is elevated to another, more rarefied level of significance. Is she perhaps, someone who might, at a pinch, have inspired a murderous jealousy in her liege lord?
Andrew Wilton was the first Curator of the Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection at Tate Britain and is the author of many works on the artist.