The attribution of this charming portrait has variously been given to Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), Jacopo Bassano, or his son Leandro (1557–1622), all of whom were born and worked in the Veneto region surrounding Venice. Most scholars have been inclined to assume that this is a product of one or the other of the two Bassanos, given the solidity of the sitter, as well as the realism of the portrayal here. If the author of the painting is in fact Jacopo, whose superlative masterwork Flight into Egypt hangs in the Museum's Renaissance gallery, then it is a rare example of this genre, as very few portraits by Jacopo’s hand have been documented.
This painting was previously in the Edward Cheney (d. 1884) collections of Venice and Badger Hall in Shropshire. It was then in the Robert H. Benson collection by 1894, where it remained until it was sold to Duveen Brothers in 1927. Its frame was made by Ferruccio Vannoni, an artist and carver working in Florence who Duveen’s Paris office employed in the 1930s to create appropriate period frames for their stock.
Details
- Artist Name: Jacopo Bassano (Italian, 1510-1592)
- Title: Portrait of a Lady
- Date: after 1570
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 31 x 25-3/4 in. (78.7 x 65.4 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1965.1.002.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
Robert H. (1850-1929) and Evelyn Holford Benson, London; by at least 1894, sold 1 June 1927 to;
[Duveen Bros., New York, stock no. 29351, sold 1965 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[on loan]
- Burlington House (London, England), 1887 to
Exhibition of Venetian Art
- London, New Gallery, 1894 to 1895
Three Great Centuries of Venetian Glass
- Corning Museum of Glass, 1958 to
[on loan]
- Fullerton Library, 1968-01 to 1970-01
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1970-01 to 1974-05
Loan Exhibition of the Benson Collection of Old Italian Masters
- Manchester, City Art Gallery, 1927-04-27 to 1927-07-30
[on loan]
- Detroit Institute of Arts, 1974-06-12 to 1975-10
Six Centuries of Portraiture from the Permanent Collection
- Norton Simon Museum, 1989-11-02 to 1990-12-16
Lock, Stock and Barrel: Norton Simon's Purchase of Duveen Brothers Gallery
- Norton Simon Museum, 2014-10-24 to 2015-02-16
- Greuber, H. and I. Spielman, Exhibition of Venetian Art, 1894, no. 181
- Berenson, Bernard, The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, 1894, p. 85
- Borneius, Trancred, Catalogue of the Italian Pictures at 16 South Street, Park Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex collected by Robert and Evelyn Benson, 1914, no. 109
- City Art Gallery, Loan Exhibition of Benson Collection of Old Italian Masters, 1927, no. 58
- Fiocco, Giuseppe, Paolo Veronese, 1928, pl. CXCVIII pp. 118, 145
- Arslan, Wart, I Bassano, 1931, p. 279
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. D4 p. 441
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