Portrait of a Lady

1520/1525

Bernardino Luini

Artist, Milanese, c. 1480 - 1532

Shown from the waist up, a young woman with pale, peachy skin faces and looks directly at us in this vertical portrait painting. The subtly upturned corners of her mouth and the outer corners of her eyes are touched with shadows. Her delicate eyebrows are faintly painted over dark brown eyes. She has a long straight nose and an oval-shaped face framed by large teardrop pearl earrings. Her dark brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back under a wide, gold-colored headdress, which creates a halo-like ring around her head. Precisely formed curls rest against her forehead over each temple. Her black dress has voluminous, puffy sleeves framing a sheer, butter-yellow panel covering her chest. White ruffles emerge at her neck and cuffs. A gold Maltese cross, which flares at the end of each arm, hangs from a thick gold chain that falls over her chest and down to her waist. She touches the chain with her left hand, on our right, and with the other she holds the body of a small furry brown animal with bared teeth. The background behind the woman is black down the center and a dark emerald-green curtain falls to either side.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 18

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Andrew W. Mellon Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 77 × 57.5 cm (30 5/16 × 22 5/8 in.)
    framed: 98.11 × 78.42 × 6.99 cm (38 5/8 × 30 7/8 × 2 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1937.1.37

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Possibly Queen Isabel II of Spain [abdicated 1870, d. 1904]; possibly from her to Frederick Richards Leyland, Liverpool;[1] (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 28 May 1892, no. 103); (Charles Fairfax Murray, London and Florence); Robert Henry [1850-1929] and Evelyn Holford [1856-1943] Benson, London and Buckhurst Park, Sussex, by 1893; sold 1927 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[2] purchased April 1928 by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 30 March 1932 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA.
[1] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1979, vol. 1, p. 282.
[2] According to Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America, New York, 1941.
[3] Mellon/Mellon Trust purchase date and/or date deeded to Mellon Trust is according to Mellon collection files in NGA curatorial records and David Finley's notebook (donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in the Gallery Archives).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1927

  • Loan Exhibition of the Benson Collection of Old Italian Masters, City of Manchester Art Gallery, 1927, no. 26.

2014

  • Bernardino Luini e i suoi figli [Bernardino Luini and His Sons], Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2014, no. 40, repros
    .

Bibliography

1914

  • Borenius, Tancred. Catalogue of Italian Pictures at 16 South Street, Park Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex Collected by Robert and Evelyn Benson. London, 1914: no. 66.

1935

  • Tietze, Hans. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935: 103, repro. (English ed., Masterpieces of European Painting in America. New York, 1939: 103, repro.).

1937

  • Cortissoz, Royal. An Introduction to the Mellon Collection. Boston, 1937: repro. 16.

  • Jewell, Edward Alden. "Mellon's Gift." Magazine of Art 30, no. 2 (February 1937): 82.

1941

  • Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no, 140, repro.

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 116-117, no. 37.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 240, repro. 141.

1949

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 36, repro.

1952

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Great Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1952: 64, color repro.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 303, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 78.

1966

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:144, color repro.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 69, repro.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:235.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 202, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:282-283, 2:pl. 193.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 100, no. 54, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 236, repro.

1991

  • Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 66, 67, color repro.

  • Morandotti, Alessandro. "La fortuna collezionistica della pittura gotica e rinascimentale fra Ottocento e Novecento." In Mauro Natale, ed. Pittura italiana dal '300 al '500. Milan, 1991: fig. 8.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 92, no. 66, color repro.

2015

  • Swicklik, Michael, Barbara H. Berrie, and Gretchen Hirschauer. "Sfumato and Sheen: Bernardo Luini's Lady in Black." Facture: conservation, science, art history 2 (2015): 140-157, figs. 1, 3 (detail), 4 (detail), 8, 11, 12, 13 (detail).

2017

  • Serres, Karen. "Duveen's Italian framemaker, Ferruccio Vannoni." The Burlington Magazine 159, no. 1370 (May 2017): 373 n. 41.

2019

  • Quattrini, Cristina. Bernardino Luini: Catalogo generale delle opere. Turin, 2019: 84, 389-390, 440, cat. 156, pl. XXX.

2021

  • Dal Pozzolo, Enrico Maria. Lorenzo Lotto: Catalogo generale dei dipinti. Milan, 2021: 180, fig. a.

2022

  • Brown, David Alan. Overshadowed--Leonardo da Vinci and Bernardino Luini. Milan, 2022: 53, 56, 57, color fig. 37, 66 note 104.

Wikidata ID

Q20175673

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