Portrait of a Dominican Nun
First documented in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1693, this panel depicts a nun whose identity is still unknown. Portrayed against a pastel green background, she wears the attire of a Dominican: a light-coloured tunic, a double veil and a wimple, a strip of soft fabric wrapped delicately around her neck, face and head. The lily, the symbol of virginity, is an allusion to Caterina Benincasa, the saint from Siena, the city with which the painter of this work has been associated.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
late 16th - early 17th century
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, 54.6 x 38.7 x 5 cm
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection 1693 (Inventory 1693, room IX, no. 32); Inventory 1725, room IX, no. 12; Inventory 1765, p. 76; Inventory 1790, room III, no. 18; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 17. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1907 - Luigi Bartolucci (disinfestazione dai tarli e riparazione dei buchi);
- 1931 - Tito Venturini Papari, Achille Bertini Calosso;
- 2012 - Paola Tollo;
- 2012 - Studio Emmebi (indagini diagnostiche).
Commentary
The provenance of this work is still unknown. Critics (della Pergola 1959) have identified it with the entry in the 1693 inventory of the possessions of the Borghese family which describes a work ‘[...] of approximately two spans on panel with the head of a nun with someone holding a lily in his hand [sic]’. The compiler of the document ascribed the painting to ‘il Sofonisba’; this attribution was repeated in the 1790 inventory, where the more precise reference to ‘Pietro Sofonisba’ was given. Yet since then the name of the painter of this portrait has been contested: while the Inventario Fidecommissario of 1833 listed the work as by Pier Francesco Mola, Adolfo Venturi (1893), taking up the suggestion of Ramhdor (1787), attributed it to the Sienese painter Francesco Vanni.
This theory was in turn rejected by both Roberto Longhi (1928), who wrote of the circle of Domenico Beccafumi and Bartolomeo Neroni, and by Paola della Pergola (1955), who published the painting in the Galleria Borghese catalogue with an attribution to an anonymous Tuscan master. In her opinion, the panel is certainly a product of the Sienese school; she noted the similarities in the depiction of veil with the style of the young Rosso Fiorentino, evident in particular in one of his portraits conserved in the Uffizi Gallery (Portrait of a Young Woman, inv. no. 99573). Her proposal received the support of Kristina Herrmann Fiore (2006) and has not been called into question by other critics.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- F. W. B. von Ramdohr, Ueber Malherei und Bildhauerarbeit in Rom für Liebhaber des Schönen in der Kunst, I, Leipzig 1787, I, p. 301;
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 115;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 106;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 193;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, p. 36, n. 47;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 55.
