Eleonora di Toledo

c. 1560

Agnolo Bronzino

Artist, Florentine, 1503 - 1572

Shown from the hips up, a pale-skinned woman with a long, narrow face wears a richly decorated crimson-red dress in this vertical portrait painting. Her body angles to our left, and she looks in that direction with hooded brown eyes. She has a long nose, a pointed chin, and her pink lips are closed. Deep indentations at her temples and the hollows of her cheeks are shadowed. Her brown hair is parted down the middle and held back in a gold net. Large pearls hang from her ears, and a long strand of pearls doubled around her neck look white at her collar and gray down by her waist. The bodice of her dress is patterned with marigold orange and wine red, and translucent white lace covers her chest and flares up the sides of her neck. A heavy outer garment has black stripes decorated with gold leafy designs alternating with ruby-red stripes. The seams are studded with pearls down the front and along the split sleeves. A gray cuff lines the wrist of a bare, long-fingered hand, which rests across the other forearm. She wears a leather-brown glove on the other hand and clutches a white cloth in that fist. She sits on a pine-green cushion, and an apple-red curtain falls in gentle folds across the background.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.
Not on view See artworks now on view

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 86.4 x 65.1 cm (34 x 25 5/8 in.)
    framed: 111.4 x 89.5 x 9.2 cm (43 7/8 x 35 1/4 x 3 5/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.7

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

William Beckford [1760-1844], Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, and Bath, England; probably by inheritance to Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton [1767-1852], Hamilton Palace, Strathclyde, who married Beckford's daughter, Susan Euphenia [d. 1859]; by inheritance to his son, William Alexander Anthony Archibald Douglas [1811-1863], 11th Duke of Hamilton, Hamilton Palace, Strathclyde, Scotland; by inheritance to his son, William Alexander Louis Stephen Douglas-Hamilton [1845-1895], 12th Duke of Hamilton, Hamilton Palace, Strathclyde, Scotland; (Hamilton Palace sale, Christie, Manson & Wood, London, 1 July 1882, no. 756); (Colnaghi, London and New York); The Hon. Francis Barry; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 3 June 1893, no. 11); (Colnaghi, London and New York). Thomas Glen Arthur [1857-1907], Ayr, Strathclyde, Scotland; sold 1906 to (Colnaghi, London and New York) on joint account with (M. Knoedler & Co., London and New York); sold 1910 to Victor G. Fischer, Washington, D.C.; sold 1912 back to (Colnaghi, London and New York), possibly on joint account with (M. Knoedler & Co., London and New York); sold 1926 to (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome and Florence);[1] sold 1954 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1961 to NGA.
[1] See 31 July 1987 letter from Martha Hepworth, in NGA curatorial files. The painting was lent by Contini to a1930 exhibition in London.
[2] On 7 June 1954 the Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi for sixteen paintings, including the NGA painting. In a draft of one of the documents prepared for the Count's signature in connection with the offer this painting is described as one "which came from my personal collection in Florence." The Count accepted the offer on 30 June 1954; the final payment for the purchase was ultimately made in early 1957, after the Count's death in 1955. (See copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files and The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/698).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1930

  • Exhibition of Italian Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1930, no. 761 (no. 425 of commemorative catalogue published 1931).

1939

  • Mostra Medicea, Palazzo Medici, Florence, 1939, Sala XX, no. 10, pl. 60.

Bibliography

1956

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 44, no. 13, repro.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 111, repro.

1963

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:44. 2:pl.1459.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 20.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 13, repro.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 36, 647, as Studio of Bronzino.

1973

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 15-16, fig. 27.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 48, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:93; 2:pl. 62, as Studio of Bronzino.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 182, no. 205, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 69, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20176599

You may be interested in

Loading Results