English: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 201:

Technical notes: The support consists of a single piece of medium densely woven plain weave fabric, probably linen. The tacking edges are present along the right and left sides of the painting while the top has probably been trimmed to some extent. The painting is mounted on a stretcher. There is faintly visible cusping on the back of the painting. The ground has a greyish-blue tone and has been applied thickly and evenly so that it covers the texture of the canvas. There is no visible imprimatura. The preparatory layers consist of light grey under- face. The paint layer is opaque, covers the painting completely and is applied impasto, particularly in the pearls and individual details in the gown. There is a non-original inscription in the upper left of the picture. Three minor repairs have been made of holes/tears. There is visible overpainting along the lower edge of the painting from right to left. Partial retouches have been made in the background, face, collar and dog. The hands have been enhanced at some later date. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1901, 1921 and 1980.

Provenance: Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer, Prague (?); Gripsholm after 1795; Grispholm 1831.

Bibliography: Granberg, p. 114; Cat. Gripsholm (Portrait collection) I, 1951, p. 170.

This portrait probably depicts Claudia de’Medici, Princess of Tuscany, who was married to Duke Frans Ubaldo of Urbino by her first marriage and to the Archduke Leopold of Austria by her second. The subject is portrayed full-length, facing half left with a fan in her hand. She has brown eyes, dark-brown hair in which there is a golden ornament with black gems, a necklace round her throat and a pearl-trimmed collar of tulle trimmed with lace. Her gown has a rich pattern of black against a yellow ground and there are zigzag and floral decorations on the skirt. On each wrist she is wearing tulle cuffs decorated with pearls and around her throat a large necklace with two rows of pearls that extends down to her waist. A small brown and white lapdog is standing at her feet to the right. In the background we can see a pedestal and above it dark, brownish red drapery. The two-dimensionality of this portrait and the emphasis on the decorative details of the garments is characteristic of the portrait ideals of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The effect of this style of portrait is to render the subjects as symbols of their gender, social rank and status rather than as physical beings with bodies, minds and personalities. The subject of this portrait has been posed stiffly like a heraldic figure gazing aloofly at the viewer in a setting that only implies the palace interior that alludes to her social position. This is also indicated by the magnificent gown, the jewellery and fan, as well as the tiny lapdog, which may here be an expression of marital fidelity. This portrait was probably seized by Swedish troops during the sack of Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer in Prague in 1648. It may later have been concealed behind a reference to a portrait of “Claudia Florentina” in an inventory of the royal household dating from 1661.1 A portrait that is reminiscent of this one in the Gripsholm collection and painted by Sustermans can be found in Poggio a Caiano.2 On stylistic and technical grounds, however, the Gripsholm portrait does not seem to have been painted by Sustermans but by a successor or a painter working in Sustermans’ studio. This is shown by the variations in the technical quality of the portrait, in which the face is rendered with greater virtuosity than the subject’s garments and the background. KS

1 See the Gripsholm inventory for Grh 1216, and the note on the existence of a portrait of this kind in the inventory of the royal household for 1661.

2 Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1911, tome I, p. 491. [End]