Portrait of a Woman (Cassandra Fedele?)

Attributed to Carpaccio Vittore

(Venice c. 1460-65 - c. 1526)

Having entered the Borghese collection at an unspecified time, the panel is only mentioned in the Fideicommissary inventory of 1833. Here it is listed as a portrait, while later, also due to the numerous re-painting efforts, which were later removed, it was identified as a female ‘Saint’. The portrait - recently identified as that of Venetian poet Cassandra Fedele - is closely related to the famous Dame [Ladies] in the Museo Correr in Venice. Like these, the woman, long believed to be a courtesan, on the contrary, is recognised by the jewellery she is wearing and her hairstyle as a young bride belonging to the Venetian aristocratic class.

Object details

Commentary

The painting is mentioned in the collection from the time of the 1833 fideicommissary, where it is recorded as a “Portrait, author uncertain”. Later, director Piancastelli identified the woman as a ‘saint’ due to the extensive reworkings that had greatly reduced the colours in the piece, which were removed in 1916. Following the cleaning, the scholar put forward the name of Carpaccio for the painting, followed by Venturi but not accepted by Longhi, Borenius and Hausenstein. During the 1930s, however, the attribution to the Venetian artist came back into vogue and is now generally accepted.

The attention to the rendering of the maiden’s features inevitably makes it a portrait. Vincenzo Farinella has recently identified the young woman with the virtuous Venetian poet Cassandra Fedele (1465 c- 1558), who had been the wife of Vicenza physician Gian Maria Mappelli since 1499. The date of the marriage could be linked to the execution of the painting in which the celebrated literate woman is presented with an articulate hairstyle, inspired by that of the Roman empress Faustina wife of Antoninus Pius, remembered with her husband in ancient sources as an example of perfect matrimonial harmony and therefore a model to be imitated.

The young girl has rightly been compared to some of Carpaccio’s best known paintings, now divided between the Museo Correr in Venice, which preserves the famous work with two ladies sitting waiting on a terrace - considered by John Ruskin to be "the most beautiful painting in the world" - and the Hunting in the Lagoon at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

According to recent studies, it was originally a single panel, split in half in an unspecified era, possibly used as part of a folding door (for this question see the catalogue entry for the Washington and Venice exhibition Vittore Carpaccio. Dipinti e disegni, edited by P. Humfrey, Venezia Marsilio, 2022, pp. 136-141). In the Venetian panel, the two ladies have their hair coiffed, and are wearing clothing and jewellery similar to the young woman in the Galleria Borghese, who may once have been portrayed on a larger panel that was later mutilated. The hypothesis is put forward given the cut in the lower border that interrupts the rendering of the sumptuous dress with a round neckline, at the sides of which the sleeves are barely visible. This is a typical garment of the 1690s, worn by women of high rank according to the suntuary rules of Venice, to which the white of the blouse and yellow of the dress also allude (on the choice of colours for dresses, see R. Levi Pitzusky, Il costume e la moda nella società italiana, Turin 1995). This is, as Flavia Polignano has demonstrated in a now famous and decisive study on Carpaccio’s subject (F. Polignano, Maliarde e cortigiane: titoli per una damnatio. Le Dame di Vittore Carpaccio, in “Venezia Cinquecento”, II, 3, 1992, pp.5-23), on the colours whose combination alludes to the joy of love, further emphasised in the Venetian painting by numerous animal and plant attributes. However, it is mainly the jewellery worn by the two ladies, probably mother and daughter, that definitively resolves the erroneous recognition of the two women as courtesans. These are a pearl necklace for the younger one, and a double silver strand for the older one. While in the Venetian case, the necklaces are divided between the two women, in the Roman case they are both around the neck of the younger one. As ordered by the Magistrato alle Pompe of the Republic of the Serenissima (G. Bistrot, Il Magistrato alle Pompe nella Repubblica di Venezia, 1912, rist. an.  Bologna 1969, pp. 184-186), which strictly controlled the way citizens appeared in public, necklaces had to have a precise length “around the neck and no more”, in addition to the fact that pearls, associated with Mary’s chaste conception, could not be worn by courtesans and women of non-aristocratic rank. Moreover, they could only be worn by young women or at most by women who had been married for a few years. Therefore, the Borghese lady must be a woman of noble rank and, above all, married for a short time, given the presence of the single row of pearls worn above the triple strand of silver.

Regards the shape of the hair style, the three Correr's ladies, devoted brides and wives, also follow the example of the famous empress, as does the young woman drawn by Albrecht Dürer (Vienna, Albertina, inv. 3064r), datable to the same years as the Carpaccesque paintings and inspired by the same model of virtue. 

So not a courtesan, but on the contrary, a chaste, devout and virtuous poetess, celebrated even by Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Sofia Barchiesi