Leandro Bassano (Bassano del Grappa 1557 - Venezia 1622) - Portrait of a lady with a carnation,

Lot description

oil on canvas 127 x 106 cm signed on the right LEANDER A PON [T]/ BASS. IS EQUAL PROVENANCE Finarte, Milan, April 21 1988, lot 54 (sold for 73,600,000 lire) EXHIBITIONS LITERATURE M. Natale (edited by), Pittura italiana dal '300 al '500, Milano 1991, p. 72 The work is signed LEANDER A PON / BASS. IS EQUES at the lower right, just above the hand with which the sitter holds the fan. The appellation eques (knight) is a crucial element for dating the work, allowing the establishment of a terminus post quem of 1595. As Ridolfi recounts, Leandro was granted the knighthood of San Marco by Doge Marino Grimani (elected, indeed, in 1595); in the biography dedicated to Bassano, Ridolfi writes: "E perché si predicava dall'universale la bellezza dei suoi ritratti, volle il Doge Marin Grimano essere da lui ritratto, che fu posto nelle stanze della Procuratia; del quale così quel Principe si compiacque, che lo creò suo Cavaliere" (Ridolfi, Vite dei pittori Veneti e dello Stato, Padova 1840, vol. II, p. 370). The Portrait of Doge Marino Grimani and that of his wife, Dogaressa Morosina Morosini, executed around 1595, are today preserved in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. Like these two works, the painting offered here constitutes an important testimony to Leandro Bassano’s portraiture, a genre in which the artist specialized and achieved outstanding results starting around 1580, when he began working independently, separating from his father Jacopo’s workshop in Bassano and moving to Venice.