Portrait of a young girl, three-quarter-length, holding a blue-headed parrot

Details

Circle of Agnolo Bronzino (Florence 1503-1572)
Portrait of a young girl, three-quarter-length, holding a blue-headed parrot
oil on panel
27 ½ x 19 ¾ in. (69.8 x 50.2 cm.)

Provenance

Marquis Giovanni Gerini, Florence.
with Newhouse Galleries, New York, by the 1930s, as a seated portrait of Maria de’ Medici, daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici I, where acquired by
Adolph D. Williams and Wilkins C. Williams, Richmond, VA., by whom gifted on 25 March 1949 to
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA.

Literature

Collection of Mrs. and Mr. Williams, Newhouse Galleries, New York, 1930s.
European Art in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: A Catalogue, Richmond, VA., 1966, p. 18, no. 18, illustrated.

Exhibited

Baltimore, MD., The Walters Art Museum, circa 1987.

Sale room notice

Please note that this lot may be the picture offered by Ivor Churchill Guest, 1st Viscount Wimborne (1873-1939) of Canford Magna in the County of Dorset, as ‘BRONZINO. / Portrait of a Daughter of Cosimo I. / In pink dress embroidered with white braid, holding a parrot’ at Christie’s, London, on 9 March 1923, lot 7, where it was acquired by Hugh Blaker (1873-1936).

Lot Essay

Formerly misattributed to both Agnolo Bronzino and Jacopo da Pontormo, this enigmatic painting of a young girl recalls the portraiture of both Maso da San Friano and Santi di Tito (see for example, Santi di Tito's Portrait of Lucrezia, daughter of Niccolò di Sinibaldo Gaddi, standing full-length in the garden of the Palazzo Gaddi, with a macaw and a jerboa, formerly in the collection of Saam and Lily Nijstad, The Hague; E. Barletti and A. Morrogh, 'La 'casa dell'orto' di Niccolò Gaddi', in Giovanni Antonio Dosio da San Gimignano architetto e scultor fiorentino tra Roma, Firenze e Napoli, Florence, 2011, pp. 471, 486–88, illustrated). The present sitter was at one time believed to be Maria de' Medici (1540–1557), the eldest daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-1574) and Eleonora of Toledo (1522-1562), Grand Duke and Duchess of Tuscany.

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