The Portrait of a young woman today attributed to Piero del Pollaiolo (Florence, 1443 – Rome, 1496), preserved in Poldi Pezzoli Museum of Milan, has become a symbol of the charm exerted by the Florentine Renaissance. A painting that has enjoyed considerable success since the end of the 1870s, when it was acquired by Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzolibecoming one of the most loved works in the collection, until it became a true icon of the Museum opened to the public in 1881.
Piero del Pollaiolo and the portraits of young ladies
The various portraits of young women, particularly common in the Florentine area, are linked to the tradition of ancient imperial medals and were intended to commemorate the wedding. The artists represented the upper part of the body, emphasizing the clothes, fabrics and jewels, which often become the protagonists of these works. Those of Pollaiolo – today preserved in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York – represent one of the greatest expressions of this typology Florentine portraiture of the second half of the fifteenth century. These paintings were exhibited and studied by Aldo Galli and Andrea di Lorenzo, curators of the exhibition The Pollaiolo ladies. A Florentine Renaissance workshop (Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, from 7 November 2014 to 16 February 2015) which reconstructed the story of the two brothers Antonio and Piero Pollaiolo, two different but equally extraordinary artistic personalities. If for a long time Antonio del Pollaiolo was considered a brilliant and multifaceted artist to the detriment of his brother Piero, considered little more than a wingman, today, thanks to the research of Aldo Galli, the situation appears radically different. Numerous paintings have been attributed to his hand: a refined painter, Piero del Pollaiolo used oil techniques like the Flemish, while Antonio’s versatility in modeling terracotta and bronze sculptures, goldsmithery and embroidery was highlighted. Therefore the studies led the curators to discern the hand of Piero as the talented painter to whom the famous four female portraits are attributed.
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A new restored portrait of a lady: a masterpiece to study
A very high quality painting, tempera and oil on wood (dimensions 43.5×25 cm), now in a private collection, was recently restored and analysed, representing a lady seen in profile according to a custom that was made famous by the paintings of Pollaioleschi ladies. The painting, seen with oblique light, before the restoration, highlighted some small liftings of preparation and color arranged in a crest along the grain of the wood and some slight depressions that could suggest failures of the pictorial layer. It is quite probable, although not certain, that the painting was subjected to color transposition in the past (the presence of protein glues in the deeper layers could confirm the hypothesis). The radiographic image has good radiopacity and reveals a mixture rich in lead white, which was also found in chemical analyses. Microstratigraphic analyzes revealed the use of pigments and plaster preparations and animal glue of ancient origins. Only in the blue part of the sky was the presence of cobalt blue (Thenard blue) detected, a pigment introduced for artistic use starting from 1804. Moreover, Pollaiolo’s other female portraits also suffered from repainting and retouching, which have raised debates about attribution. The IR reflectography examination of the painting revealed no significant regrets, the drawing corresponds perfectly to the visible image except for the profile of the nose which appears to be slightly shifted. Thanks to careful cleaning carried out in several phases, it was possible to recover the delicate original colour, freeing it from the overflowing restorations carried out in the past, allowing for better readability of the painting and its details such as the pearl necklace and the ear.
A new lady to be attributed to Piero del Pollaiolo?
Precisely from the stylistic comparison of this work with the one preserved in Berlin, the common setting of the figure emerges, which emerges from the decorated balustrade. The woman’s face, perfectly in profile, appears sweet and vague, with the complexion slightly brightened on the left cheek, while the shadows of the eyelid and nostril are hinted at with great delicacy; her blond hair, worked with a dense and painstaking pictorial material, is collected and held by strings of white gauze which also stretches over her ear, covering it. And precisely the dense pictorial treatment of the hair, as well as the rendering of the fabrics and the jewel, seems to refer to the hand of Piero del Pollaiolo, a true master in bringing out the material aspect. The bust, three-quarter portrait, highlights the elaborate details of the ruby velvet sleeves of the lady’s dress: the rich brocade motif in gold thread that decorates the shoulder and arm of the left sleeve is therefore legible, in its continuity, also on the right forearm.
The cut of the figure and its three-quarter layout closely recall those of the Lady of Berlin and probably respond to the same desire to highlight the depiction of the pelvis, perhaps for an allegorical function. The dress is updated compared to the model worn by the Lady of Berlin and reflects a well-documented evolution of costumes in Florence in the late fifteenth century.
The fashion of the Florentine fifteenth century in Pollaiolo’s ladies
The structure of the gamurra worn by the lady in our painting completely recalls that of the lady in Poldi Pezzoli, both in the alternation between a monochrome dress and velvet sleeves with elaborate brocades, and in the disappearance of the padding on the sleeves in favor of a greater linearity of cut; finally in the design of the necklines, which seems to become deeper on the back and opens on the chest just enough to highlight the thin line of the shirt and above all the pearl necklace and the necklace, offered to the viewer in all its distinctive and allegorical meaning . Even the hairstyle appears updated, and if the gauze that holds our Lady’s hair does not appear particularly thin or refined, what is certain is that the design of the chignon and the help provided by the cords of a veil stretched over the ear are completely similar to those, very delicate, of the Lady of Poldi Pezzoli. If the details of pose, clothing and hairstyle seem to pose the Lady of our painting halfway between that of Berlin and that of Milan, it will be noted that these same elements distance her from the Ladies of Florence and New York, who were decidedly later. The ladies in these last two paintings are dressed in a sleeveless giornea overlaid with a surplice made of thin and preciously embroidered fabric. The portrait in question is of very high quality but difficult to document. Furthermore, the particularly distinctive physiognomy of the lady advises against reading her as an ideal or literary subject, but rather as a real subject. The dense and meticulous pictorial technique confirms that we are in the presence of a true masterpiece, which not only testifies to the success of a pictorial genre, but reveals a new work to be included in the corpus of the Pollaiolo brothers.
Federico Poletti
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