Neopolitan Princess - Item #444

20 Inches High x 18.5 Inches Wide x 8.75 Inches Deep

Created during the Italian Renaissance, the sitter wears a calm expression, and her hair, the clothing, and the decoration on the integral base are finely detailed. This bust may be a portrait of Ippolita Maria Sforza, the wife of King Alfonso II of Naples. Wilhelm von Bode acquired the bust for the Berlin Museums in 1877 after its discovery, and he thought the sitter to be Marietta Strozzi – who was considered the most beautiful woman in Florence – and the sculptor to be Desiderio da Settignano. The current consensus concerning the identity of the artist, stemming from von Bode’s reevaluation in 1888, is that the bust was made by Dalmatian sculptor Francesco Laurana (1420/25-c. 1502) since several other surviving female portraits look very similar to this one and may be of the same subject. Ever popular, the bust was widely reproduced in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Since 1945, the original marble bust is in two parts because of damage during a fire. The head resides in the Bode-Museum in Berlin while the rest of the sculpture is in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

Artist: Francesco Laurana

Museum: Bode-Museum, Berlin, and Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

Time Period: Renaissance, 1472

1911 Catalog ID # - 5173

Sources:

"Bust of a Woman." Victoria & Albert Museum, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O39862/bust-of-a-woman-bust-laurana-francesco/.

Coonin, Arnold Victor. “The Most Elusive Woman in Renaissance Art: A Portrait of Marietta Strozzi.” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 30, no. 59, 2009, pp. 41–64. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40343663. 

"Francesco Laurana." National Gallery of Art, https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.2145.html.