Portrait of a young noblewoman wearing fine jewels and a black dress with gold embroidery in the form of wheatsheaves and a high white ruff collar

The Farnese Collection of the Dukes of Parma and Piacenza; [i]

M. Pontremoli, France (according to a label on the back of the old frame); [ii]

With Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd, London, 2014, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Footnotes

[i] The panel bears the wax seal of Ranuccio II Farnese (1630 – 1694) and four inventory numbers, one in red wax: i55, the second in grey-white oil: 472, a third in black: LB #43 and the fourth: 265 in thinner black. Recorded in the circa 1680 inventory of the Farnese collections in the Palazzo del Giardino, Parma, as being in the ‘Camera di Venere del Cantone’: ‘Un quadro alto oncie otto, largo oncie cinque e tre quarti in tavola. Una testa di donna giovine con ornato di gioie e perle, frappa al collo, vestita di nero con ricamo, di Mano Fiamenga n.155.’ See G. Bertini, La Galleria del Duca di Parma, Bologna 1987, p. 258, no. 566.

[ii] Possibly Emanuel Pontremoli (1865 – 1956): a French architect, archaeologist and director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, who was married to Suzanne Hecht.