Explore the History of this artwork.
The painting passed from the Gonzaga collection in Mantua to the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, where it is listed as Catherine Cornaro ("Queen of Cyprus") in the inventory in 1659.
An engraving of a copy of the painting shows an inscription "E Titiani prototypo P. P. Rubens exc. Isabella Estensis Francisisci Gonzagae March. Matovae uxor". However, this inscription is three to four generations later and thus uncertain (cf. the mistaken baroque naming "Queen of Cyprus").
On the basis of this later inscription, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle assigned the painting to a commission from the 60-year-old Isabella d'Este, which has been recorded in letters: Titian was to paint her portrait in 1534 on the basis of a portrait (now considered lost) by Francesco Francia in 1511. Isabella commented on the portrait, completed in 1536, with "The portrait by Titian's hand is of such a pleasing type that we doubt that we were ever, at the age he represents, of such beauty that is contained in it." The lost Francia original had already been painted 25 years earlier in absentia on the basis of oral descriptions and a third-party drawing. And the drawing is assumed to be a more than ten year older one by Leonardo da Vinci (1499/1500). Isabella obviously wanted to be kept youthful and as an (ex-)beauty. Titian's other portrait of the aged Isabella d'Este (Isabella in Red, today only preserved by a Rubens copy in the same museum), had probably not pleased her, which is why this second commission is assumed.
In the 1930s, Wilhelm Suida and Leandro Ozzola opposed this naming as an idealisation of Isabella d'Este. Therefore, only artist and dating were documented as accepted by experts. In the catalogue of the Isabella d'Este exhibition in Vienna (1994), the painting was still marketed as "by the hand of Titian, the 'greatest portrait painter of all time', as the portrait that clearly represents her". The academic exhibition review again opposed: "but why, when engaged on so professional a face-lift, did Titian use so coarse a canvas?"
Gonzaga collection Rubens Titian Isabella d'Este Mantua Francesco Francia Catherine Cornaro Vienna Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle