| Isabella in Red | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Rubens (copy after Titian) |
| Year | c. 1605 |
| Type | Oil on Canvas |
| Subject | Isabella d'Este |
| Dimensions | 102 cm× 81 cm(40 in× 32 in) |
| Location | Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
| Accession | GG 1534 |
Isabella in Red (also called Portrait of the Aged Isabella d'Este ) is a portrait of a woman by Peter Paul Rubens in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is considered a close copy of a lost Titian original.
The knee-piece shows a somewhat chubby middle-aged woman in a red velvet dress in front of a turquoise background. On her head she wears a balzo, a fashionable invention of Isabella d'Este (from 1509 [1] ), which was widely used in northern Italy in the 1530s. Personal features are reddish-brown curls, brown eyes and classically arched eyebrows.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Rubens was a court painter in Mantua. During this time (and later in other places) he copied Italian painters, including Titian. These are considered close copies. [2] The date of the Rubens copy remains unclear (1600, c. 1605 or later), and so does the date of Titian's original (depending on the source, the years 1524-1536 are assumed). After Rubens' death, two copies from his hand of two Titian portraits depicting Isabella d'Este are mentioned in his inventory. [3] The Rubens painting Isabella in Red later transferred from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Independently, since chronologically before, other copies of the lost Titian original exist, in particular:
As identifications of Isabella d'Este (1474-1539), three coloured portraits are exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. [6] The personal characteristics are contradictory (see graphic on the right):
Due to the resulting confusion, all other museums have withdrawn colour identifications. [8] The differences cannot be explained by idealisation, as Isabella in Black was commissioned as a "face-lift" of the over-60s and would be unflattering (e.g. eye colour, stub nose and eyebrows). [9]
Potential explanation would be a misidentification either in Isabella in Black or coincident confusions in Isabella in Red and the Ambras Miniature. The contradictions start in the inventory after Ruben's death in Antwerp with the simultaneous naming of Isabella in Red and Isabella in Black. The inventory is four generations later, in 1640, and thus included namings are not reliable. Portrayals with Balzo were often referred to as the famous patron of the arts after Isabella d'Este's death. [10]
The two older copies of the lost Titian original (including an inscription "Isabella Estensis" independent of Rubens) speak for the correct identification in the model of Isabella in Red. The Ambras Miniature also shows homogeneous features with Isabella in Red, bears also an inscription Isabella Estensis and, as a Mantuan copy about a generation later, should still represent a relatively contemporary identification. The confusion would then have to be (as published by some experts) in Isabella in Black. [11]
Isabella d'Este was Marchioness of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion, whose innovative style of dressing was copied by numerous women. The poet Ariosto labeled her as the "liberal and magnanimous Isabella", while author Matteo Bandello described her as having been "supreme among women". Diplomat Niccolò da Correggio went even further by hailing her as "The First Lady of the world".
Giorgione was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance, who died in his thirties. He is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are firmly attributed to him. The uncertainty surrounding the identity and meaning of his work has made Giorgione one of the most mysterious figures in European art.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome. The term Kunsthistorisches Museum applies to both the institution and the main building. It is the largest art museum in the country and one of the most important museums worldwide.
Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, called L'Antico by his contemporaries, and often Antico in English, the nickname given for the refined interpretation of the Antique they recognized in his work, was a 15th- and 16th-century North Italian Renaissance sculptor, known for his finely detailed small bronzes all'Antica—coolly classicizing, often with gilded details, and silver-inlaid eyes, a refinement that is found in some classical and Hellenistic Greek bronzes.
Laura, formerly sometimes known as Portrait of a Young Bride, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giorgione. It is the only known painting of the author that was signed and dated by him, it has his name and the date of 1506 on the back. It hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
Isabella in Black is a portrait of a young woman by Titian. It can be dated to the 1530s and is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The artist and the date are undisputed. Beyond the museum documentaton, there are repeated doubts about the person depicted.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books.
Lucretia and her Husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus or Tarquin and Lucretia is an oil painting attributed to Titian, dated to around 1515 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The attribution to this artist is traditional but uncertain - the brightened palette suggests it could instead be by Palma Vecchio. However, others identify the painting as part of Titian's series of half-length female figures from 1514 to 1515, which also includes the Flora at the Uffizi, the Woman with a Mirror at the Louvre, the Violante and the Young woman in a black dress in Vienna, Vanity in Munich and the Salome at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj. There is an early copy in the Royal Collection.
Violante is an oil painting attributed to Titian, dated to around 1515 and now held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Flora is an oil painting by Italian late Renaissance painter Titian, dated to around 1515 and now held at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Woman with a Mirror is a painting by Titian, dated to c. 1515 and now in the Musée du Louvre.
The Portrait of Alfonso I d'Este is a now-lost painting by Titian, dating to 1523. It was painted as a pendant to the Portrait of Laura Dianti of the same year and is now known through copies, one of which is by Rubens and another of which is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Others are held in the collections of the countess of Vogüe Commarin at Dijon and the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen - the latter is the oldest but only shows the head and shoulders.
La Bella is a portrait of a woman by Titian in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The painting shows the subject with the ideal proportions for Renaissance women. In parallel the stringent composition corresponds to Titian's real portraits. The work can be dated by a letter about “that portrait of that woman in a blue dress“ in May 1536.
Shepherd with a flute, or Boy with a Pipe, is a painting in oil on canvas of perhaps 1510–1515, in recent decades usually attributed to Titian, though in the past often to Giorgione. It is now in the Royal Collection, and in 2018 was in the King's Closet at Windsor Castle. Since at least 1983 it has been called Boy with a Pipe by the Royal Collection; previous titles the collection recognise include Shepherd with a pipe, and The Shepherd.
The Portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia is a painting by Rubens of Isabella Clara Eugenia. It is dated to 1625 and shows her in the habit of the Poor Clares, which she assumed on 22 October 1621 after the death of her husband Archduke Albert of Austria. She visited the painter's studio while on her way back from Breda in 1625 to see the painting begun, as a master copy from which several others could be drawn. The master copy is now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence, having been traded in the past for a portrait of the same subject by Anthony van Dyck. Two other copies are known in private collections, while a third is in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.
The Madonna of the Rabbit, The Aldobrandini Madonna, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John and a Female Saint or Donor or The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John and Saint Catherine is an oil on canvas painting by Titian dating to around 1530 and now held in the National Gallery in London. There are studio copies in the Galleria Palatina in Florence and in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Cecilia Gozzadini is an oil painting attributed to Parmigianino, dated to around 1530 and now held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The Balzo was a headdress worn by noblewomen of Italy in the 1530s. It was donut-shaped but appeared turban-like from the front, though it was generally worn further back from the forehead exposing the hair, unlike a period turban.
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