(Urbino 1535-1612)
A Portrait Study of Lavinia della Rovere (?),
oil on canvas, 49.5 x 38 cm, framed

Provenance:
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Urbino, Palazzo Ducale, I Della Rovere. Piero della Francesca, Raffaello, Tiziano, 4 April – 3 October 2004, no. VIII.14 (as attributed to Federico Barocci)

Literature:
I Della Rovere. Piero della Francesca, Raffaello, Tiziano, ed. by P. Dal Poggetto, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2004, p. 349, no. VIII.14 (as attributed to Federico Barocci);
A. Emiliani, Federico Barocci, Ancona 2008, vol. I, p. 246, no. 31 (as Federico Barocci)

The present painting displays a balance between an idealised expression and a form of authentic realism which renders the mixture of melancholy and wonder that characterises adolescence, whilst also depicting in minute detail the slight squint in the girl’s right eye. A recent diagnostic analyses undertaken on the study of the painting shows that the pupil of girl’s eye was subsequently modified by the artist himself precisely in order to enhance this charming, unique feature.
Stylistically, the present painting is typical of Barocci’s working habits. With extreme delicacy he makes use of the preparatory grounding of the canvas and raises it by means of successive, superimposed layers in the “velatura” technique, in which he excelled. The present painting is accomplished in the areas on which the viewer lingers on: the eyes, the cheeks and the curve of face, whereas it appears merely sketched or outlined in the rest of the composition.
Barocci was a cultivated and sensitive artist with a very special idea of “finitura”, or finish. Sometimes, even in his most ambitious and largest paintings, he alternated fully complete areas and merely sketched ones and it can be argued that the present painting is conceptually ‘finished’.
The painting displays an accentuated use of oil technique towards the pastel-like softness that Barocci implemented from the 1560s onwards, and to which period the present painting can be dated. The painting’s delicately alternating ranges of colour and the pictorial execution link this work to paintings executed by Barocci in the early 1570s, in particular Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere (Florence, The Uffizi Gallery; see. A. Emiliani, Federico Barocci, I, Pesaro 1985, p. 87, plate p. 86), which can be dated to circa 1572 and displays the same tendency towards a soft use of light as displayed in the present painting. According to Emiliani the present painting could not be dated earlier than the period between 1575 and 1580, in which the Madonna del Popolo in Florence was executed. It has been suggested that the sitter in the present painitng is Lavinia della Rovere, Francesco Maria’s sister, who was born in 1559 and married Alfonso Felice d’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, in 1583.
The sitter’s young age, which appears to be between thirteen and sixteen, is the age Lavinia would have been in this period. A portrait of Lavinia della Rovere executed by Barocci is mentioned by Bellori (G. P. Bellori, Le Vite de’ Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti moderni, Rome, 1672, p. 192) and Baldinucci (F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno, Florence, 1681-1728, p. 349) as well as in an epigram quoted by Bernardino Baldi (B. Baldi, Gli epigrammi inediti, gli apologhi e le egloghe, ed. by D. Ciampoli, Lanciano 1914, no. 371).

The identification of the present painting with the portrait referred to in the aforementioned could replace the traditional identification of Lavinia’s features with the Portrait of a young girl in the Uffizi (see Emiliani ibid., p. 244, n. 30; H. Olsen, Federico Barocci, Copenhagen, 1962, p. 157 n. 25).

Additional picture
F. Barocci, Portrait of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Uffizi, Florence
© Courtesy of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.