Portrait of a Noblewoman Dressed in Mourning

Inscriptions

Inscribed: A L . HT . B . (HT in ligature, on the base of the cross)

Provenance

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.

Exhibition history

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.

Publications

“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.

Quick Overview

Artist: Jacopo da Empoli (Jacopo Chimenti; Italian, 1551–1640)
Date: c. 1600
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 221 × 122.5 cm (87 × 48 1/4 in.); Framed: 243.9 × 147.4 × 5.1 cm (96 × 58 × 2 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: oil on canvas
Style: 17th Century
Place: Italy
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Credit line: Louise B. and Frank H. Woods Purchase Fund
Accession no.: 1960.1

More by Jacopo da Empoli in museum collections

Standing Male Figure
Jacopo da Empoli
c. 1600 · Drawing
Public collection via the Art Institute of ChicagoAT-00004129

Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.