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Shown from about the knees up, a woman with pale skin and honey-brown hair stands in the center of this vertical portrait painting. She turns her body slightly to our right and looks down to read a small, chocolate-brown book held up in her left hand, to our right. The book is decorated with gold bands and medallions on the spine and both covers. Her eyes are hooded under faint brows. She has a straight nose, and her small, coral-pink lips are closed. Her hair is pulled back and braided up along the side of her head. Small, translucent tendrils curl over her right temple, to our left. She wears a long, topaz-blue gown with gold trim down the high-necked bodice and the front of the skirt. The dress has dusty rose-pink sleeves edged with white ruffles at the cuffs. A white collar, pleated into figure-eights, nestles around her chin and the base of her skull. Her right arm, to our left, hangs by her side and she grasps a silvery white handkerchief bordered with thin fringe. She wears a gold ring with a red stone in a square setting on the third finger of that hand. A table covered in a scarlet-red tablecloth angles toward us to our right. Almost falling off the edge is a second book in a parchment-gold binding. The two ties at the edges of the pages are loose, and a sheet of folded paper sits on top of the book. Black script on the paper reads, “All'Ill re mia s rae p rona Oss ma la sig ra quinti lia fischieri de Bon a Urbino.” A fern-green curtain is bunched along the left side of the painting, and the rest of the background is olive green.

Federico Barocci

Quintilia Fischieri, probably c. 1600

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 123.8 x 95.3 cm (48 3/4 x 37 1/2 in.)

framed: 161.9 x 135.9 x 14 cm (63 3/4 x 53 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.165

Artists / Makers

Federico Barocci (artist) Italian, probably 1535 - 1612

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

center right on folded paper: All'Ill[ust]re mia s[igno]rae p[at]rona Oss[ervandissi]ma la sig[no]ra quinti lia fischieri de Bon[oni]a Urbino (To my illustrious lady and most respected patroness, Signora Quintilia Fischieri of Bologna / Urbino)

Provenance

(Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence and Rome); sold 1935 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[1] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1753.

Associated Names

Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.

Exhibition History

1940: Masterpieces of Art. European & American Paintings 1500-1900, New York World's Fair, 1940, no. 2, as Portrait of Woman with Book.

Bibliography

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 13, no. 276.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 245, repro. 62.

1945: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 133, repro.

1957: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 81.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 212, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 10.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 3, repro.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 16, 645.

1973: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 30-31, fig. 55.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 16, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:26-27; 2: repro. pl. 16, as Studio of Barocci.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 187, no. 212, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 36, repro.

1998: Faxon, Alicia Craig. "Reading." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography. 2 vols. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. Chicago and London, 1998: 2:769.