Portrait of a Noblewoman Dressed in Mourning

c. 1600

Jacopo da Empoli (Jacopo Chimenti; Italian, 1551–1640)

The subject of this imposing portrait is unknown today. Her black costume and traditional mourning veil indicate her status as an aristocratic widow, while the prominent crucifix refers to her piety, as does the small prayer book in her hand. The woman is nearly life-size and framed by a dramatic black curtain, conventions in portraiture of the nobility across Europe at the time. In the decades around 1600, the Medici dukes of Florence intermarried with the ruling houses of Europe, and their court artists and work-shops helped establish an international style that appealed to princely and aristocratic collectors.

Status: On View, Gallery 205
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jacopo da Empoli
Title: Portrait of a Noblewoman Dressed in Mourning
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1595–1605
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed: A L . HT . B . (HT in ligature, on the base of the cross)
Dimensions: 221 × 122.5 cm (87 × 48 1/4 in.); Framed: 243.9 × 147.4 × 5.1 cm (96 × 58 × 2 in.)
Credit Line: Louise B. and Frank H. Woods Purchase Fund
Reference Number: 1960.1
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/11390/manifest.json

“Il collezionista,” Sele arte 39 (1959), p. 80, ill.
“Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, April – June, 1960,” Art Quarterly 23 (1960), p. 305, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), pp. 48, ill., 78.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (London, 1970), p. 255, ill.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972), pp. 52, 515, 571.
Maria Adelaide Bianchini, “Jacopo da Empoli,” Paradigma 3 (1980), p. 129, fig. 32.
Giuseppe Cantelli, Repertorio della pittura fiorentina del Seicento (Florence, 1983), p. 42.
Alessandro Marabottini, Jacopo di Chimenti da Empoli (Rome, 1988), pp. 97, 226, no. 67, fig. 67.
Christopher Lloyd, Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago, 1993), pp. 76–79, ill.
Annemarie Sawkins, David Franklin and Louis Alexander Waldman, Italian Renaissance Masters, exh. cat. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2001), pp. 13, 15 n. 12.
Erika Langmuir, “Jacopo da Empoli: Empoli,” The Burlington Magazine 146 (2004), p. 430.
Christie’s, London, Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolours, sale cat., December 8, 2009, p. 88, under lot 27.

Paris, Galerie Heim, Tableaux de maîtres anciens: Nouvelles acquisitions, 1958, no. 19.
The Art Institute of Chicago, European Portraits, 1600–1900, in The Art Institute of Chicago, July 8 – September 11, 1978, no. 1.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Raphael and Titian: The Renaissance Portraits from the Pitti Palace, Florence, December 15, 1999 – March 19, 2000, no cat.
Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, The Medici, Michelangelo and The Art of Late Renaissance Florence, June 6 – 29 September, 2002, no. 22; traveled to Art Institute of Chicago, November 9, 2002 – February 2, 2003, Detroit Institute of Art, March 16 – June 8, 2003.
Empoli, Chiesa di Santo Stefano, Convento degli Agostiniani, Jacopo da Empoli, 1551–1640: Pittore d’eleganza e devozione, March 21 – June 20, 2004, no. 59.

Probably Giovanni Battista Matteo, Cavaliere di Candia (1810–1883), Villa Salviati, Florence [according to a label attached to the stretcher reading, “A lady of the Medici Family from Foots Cray Place brought there from Villa Salviati, Florence.”]. Nicholas Vansittart (d. 1851), first Baron Bexley, Foots Cray Place, near Sidcup, Kent; sold Christie’s, Foots Cray Place, May 2, 1876, no. 237, as Sustermans, Portrait of an Abbess – full length, to Eyles for ₤52 10s with no. 238 “Portrait of a Young Nobleman”, the latter which bears the inscription . AL . M . B . F. / 15(9?)3 [buyer and price of painting according to an annotated sale catalogue in the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles]; probably still in family possession, passing to Nancy Oswald Smith of Shottesbrooke Park, Maidenhead, Berkshire [for the relation of Nancy Oswald Smith to the Vansittart family, see Lloyd 1993, p. 79 n. 2]; sold Christie’s, London, February 13, 1948, no. 62, as Sustermans, to Berendt for ₤26 5s [according to annotated sale catalogue in the Ryerson Library, Art Institute; the “Portrait of a Young Nobleman” was no. 35 in this sale]. Galerie Heim, Paris, by 1958 [see Paris 1958]; purchased from Heim by the Art Institute through the Frank H. and Louise B. Woods Fund, 1960.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.