Painting by Peter Paul Rubens
Isabella in Red (also called Portrait of the Aged Isabella d'Este) is a portrait of a woman by Peter Paul Rubens in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is considered a close copy of a lost Titian original.
Description.
The knee-piece shows a somewhat chubby middle-aged woman in a red velvet dress in front of a turquoise background. On her head she wears a balzo, a fashionable invention of Isabella d'Este (from 1509), which was widely used in northern Italy in the 1530s. Personal features are reddish-brown curls, brown eyes and classically arched eyebrows.
History.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Rubens was a court painter in Mantua. During this time (and later in other places) he copied Italian painters, including Titian. These are considered close copies. The date of the Rubens copy remains unclear (1600, c. 1605 or later), and so does the date of Titian's original (depending on the source, the years 1524-1536 are assumed). After Rubens' death, two copies from his hand of two Titian portraits depicting Isabella d'Este are mentioned in his inventory. The Rubens painting "Isabella in Red" later transferred from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Independently, since chronologically before, other copies of the lost Titian original exist, in particular:
Identity of the sitter.
As identifications of Isabella d'Este (1474-1539), three coloured portraits are exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The personal characteristics are contradictory (see graphic on the right):
Due to the resulting confusion, all other museums have withdrawn colour identifications. The differences cannot be explained by idealisation, as "Isabella in Black" was commissioned as a "face-lift" of the over-60s and would be unflattering (e.g. eye colour, stub nose and eyebrows).
Potential explanation would be a misidentification either in "Isabella in Black" or coincident confusions in "Isabella in Red" and the "Ambras Miniature". The contradictions start in the inventory after Ruben's death in Antwerp with the simultaneous naming of "Isabella in Red" and "Isabella in Black". The inventory is four generations later, in 1640, and thus included namings are not reliable. Portrayals with Balzo were often referred to as the famous patron of the arts after Isabella d'Este's death.
The two older copies of the lost Titian original (including an inscription "Isabella Estensis" independent of Rubens) speak for the correct identification in the model of "Isabella in Red". The "Ambras Miniature" also shows homogeneous features with "Isabella in Red", bears also an inscription "Isabella Estensis" and, as a Mantuan copy about a generation later, should still represent a relatively contemporary identification. The confusion would then have to be (as published by some experts) in "Isabella in Black".
Literature.
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References.
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