(Florence 1536–1603)
Portrait of a noblewoman, half-length, holding a book,
oil on panel, 74 x 61 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Switzerland

We are grateful to Carlo Falciani for suggesting the attribution and his help in cataloguing this lot.

The rose-coloured flesh tones, the well-drawn oval face, the careful description of the sitter’s clothes and hair-style are all distinctive features of Santi di Tito’s oeuvre, as is the sculptural depiction of the sitter wearing an embroidered dress, which is typically simplified in the sleeves and bust. The lady wears a broad white ruff which lends a crisp light to the painting.

This work can be compared to the Portrait of Guido Guardi with his children, in a private collection, executed between 1564 and 1568, in which Santi di Tito employs the same qualities in the rendering of the subject’s features and ruff (see A. Geremicca, in: Il Cinquecento a Firenze, “maniera moderna” e controriforma, exhibition catalogue, ed. by C. Falciani/A. Natali, Florence 2017, pp. 156-157). In the present Portrait of a Lady the solid volume and powerful figure of the sitter are also set against a monochrome background which suggests a date of the present painting towards the close of the 1570s, close to that of Guido Guardi with his children.

Three paintings made for the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici at Palazzo Vecchio, Florence by Santi di Tito, entitled The Gathering of Manna, Hercules and Jole and The Crossing of the Red Sea are also comparable to the present Portrait of a Lady. Indeed, in these three canvases, Santi renewed the Florentine ‘maniera moderna’ following his journey to Venice during which he was able to study the naturalistic style of Titian and Tintoretto. The influence of this visit to Venice can also be discerned in the union of the realist and abstract qualities which characterise the present portrait.

Santi di Tito was born in Florence in 1536, he first trained with Bastiano da Montecarlo before entering the studio of Bronzino, from whom he learnt a preference for rounded luminous volumes. To this, he added clarity of composition and realism, influenced by counter-reformation art, which led him to study the style of Scipione Pulzone and the Zuccari who he knew both in Florence and during his Roman sojourn. After his initial training in Florence, Santi di Tito moved to Rome, remaining there from 1560 to 1564. Working alongside the Zuccari, he frescoed the chapel of Palazzo Salviati as well as the Casino of Pius IV and the Belvedere in the Vatican. It is likely that, while he was in Rome, Santi introduced the new complexity of character to his brand of realism, as well as a quiet simplicity that were to become fundamental to his painting and his most important contribution to Florentine painting; in 1564 he returned to his native city to contribute to the funeral of Michelangelo.

In 1584, Raffaello Borghini recorded that in Florence Santo di Tito: ‘there were portraits taken from nature of many painters and sculptors’ [‘vi sono ritratti di naturale molti pittori e scultori’] additionally observing that ‘Santi made many portraits, of Pope Pius IV, of Signor D. Ernando Cardinale de’ Medici, of Signor D. Pietro, of the Signora Isabella de’ Medici, of Signor Paolo Orsino, of Pier Vettori who was such a famous scholar, and of many others whom it would take me too long to recount’, [‘ha fatto Santi molti ritratti, come di papa Pio quarto, del Signor D. Ernando Cardinale de’ Medici, del Signor D. Pietro, della Signora Isabella de’ Medici, del Signor Paolo Orsino, di Pier Vettori per le lettere così famoso e di molti altri che troppo a lungo sarei a raccontarli’ ] (see R. Borghini, Il Riposo, Florence 1584, p. 621). Judging by the prestige of his commissions, it appears that Santi di Tito was among the most important portraitists of the age in Florence, and that this position stemmed from his skill as a painter and from his particular interest in realistic depictions, combined with his understanding of the Florentine drawing tradition, which positioned him as the natural heir to Allori, in the wake of Bronzino.