Empress Isabella (of Portugal) Empress of Spain (1503-1539) (after Titian)
after Titian (Pieve di Cadore 1488/90 - Venice 1576)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
Unknown
Materials
Oil on panel
Measurements
1092 x 914 mm (43 x 36 in)
Place of origin
Madrid
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 533873
Summary
Oil painting on panel, Isabella of Portugal, Empress of Spain (1503-1539), after Titian (Pieve di Cadore 1488/90-Venice 1576). A three-quarter length portrait, wearing a black dress slashed with white at the sleeves, shoulders and collar, seated to right, holding flowers (roses) in her right hand, her left hand placed on a table and her crown resting on a window sill behind her on the right with a plain exterior aspect.
Full description
After a lost portrait by Titian commissioned by Charles V in around 1543, finished in 1545, but destroyed in the 1604 fire at the Palace of El Pardo and is now only known through variants and prints (for example, the double portrait by Rubens of circa 1628-29 in the collection of the Fundación Casa de Alba, no. P.489, and Pieter de Jode after Titian, see, for example, Royal Collection Trust impression, RCIN 612916). The lost portrait, painted in Augsburg, showed the sitter dressed in black, holding flowers in her lap, and with the imperial crown behind her. It became the model for the 1548 portrait in the Prado, Madrid (inv.no. P000415). The present portrait bears the English royal cipher and the number 459 indicating it belonged to Charles I. Sir Oliver Millar has associated it with a portrait listed in Abraham van der Doort's catalogue of the collection of Charles I (c. 1639), no. 11, Privy Gallery, Whitehall, as: 'Emperour Charles the 5th his wife wthout/ a ruff Being daughter and heire to the King/ of Portingall Houlding Some roasees in her/ right hand In a black some part guilded frame/ Halfe a figure Soe bigg as the life.' According to catalogue it was 'Done by Tichian / Bought by the / Kinge of Nathaniell garrett'. Given that the picture is painted on oak, rather than canvas, it seems likely that the artist is a Northern copyist, perhaps working after an engraving by Pieter de Jode. The portrait was purchased by George Hammond Lucy 1835 at Mr Stanley's sale for £23.10s. 6d and displayed in the Library at Charlecote Park (Warwickshire Record Office, L06/1120/62).
Provenance
On loan from Sir Edmund Fairfax-Lucy (b. 1949).
Credit line
Charlecote Park, The Fairfax-Lucy Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: Charles I Crown and Cipher and number 459 on reverse
Makers and roles
after Titian (Pieve di Cadore 1488/90 - Venice 1576), artist previously catalogued as possibly Miguel de la Cruz (fl. c.1630 - 1660), artist