Portrait of Poppaea Sabina

School of Fontainebleau, 16^th century.

France, circa 1550-1570.

Portrait of Poppaea Sabina.

Oil on panel.

 

87.7 cm (34 ½ in.) high, unframed.

67 cm (26 ½ in.) wide, unframed.

 

Inscribed

“PONPPEA SABINA” on the painted cartouche.

 

Provenance

Possibly Don Álvaro de Mendoza (d. 1586), Bishop of Palencia, Spain, in whose 1584 inventory “a portrait of Poppaea Sabina in its frame” (“un retrato de ponpea sabina en su marco”) is listed.

 

This beguiling portrait – identified by the inscription on the painted cartouche as a likeness of Poppaea Sabina (30-65 A.D.), the second wife of Emperor Nero (37-68 A.D.) – is a striking example of a type of composition that developed in the circles of the School of Fontainebleau at the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century.

 

The term “School of Fontainebleau” is traditionally used by art historians to indicate the artists, many of whom remain to this day anonymous, that were active at the royal court of France in the period between the reigns of King François I of Valois (r. 1515-1547) and King Henri IV of Bourbon (r. 1589-1610). Albeit from different generations, and descending from different households, these two monarchs shared a particular love for the royal residence of Fontainebleau, located about fifty kilometres southeast of Paris. In 1528, François started a radical programme of renovation of the original medieval castle, employing an array of painters, decorators, draughtsmen and sculptors from France and beyond. An ambitious patron, in 1516 he had famously called the nearly-septuagenarian Leonardo da Vinci to France (where the latter would die in 1519), and for the project at Fontainebleau he summoned, amongst others, Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540) and Primaticcio (1504-1570), two heralds of the Italian Maniera.

 

The scope of François’ patronage, however, did not focus solely on these Italian masters and their disciples. As indicated by sixteenth-century French inventories, the Valois court also witnessed a burgeoning interest in Dutch and Flemish painting, including genre scenes, and the flourishing of French portraiture, most notably embodied by the work of the Flemish émigré Jean Clouet (1480-1521) and of his son François Clouet (c. 1510-1572).

 

With its classical subject, pose of the arms inspired by Leonardo’s Saint John the Baptist (fig. 1, Louvre Museum, Paris) and subtlety of style and form that echoes that of François Clouet’s portraits, the present painting beautifully exemplifies the cultural richness of Fontainebleau’s court. Nothing is known about the composition’s precise origin, but the story of Poppaea Sabina (30-65 A.D.) is notoriously narrated in Tacitus’ (c. 55-c.120 A.D.) Annales, an account of Roman history – from the death of Augustus in 14 A.D. to that of Nero in 68 A.D. – widely read in the Renaissance. Famed for her beauty, if not her morals, Poppaea hailed from a family whose members had held political office under the Empire, and she further rose through the ranks of society thanks to three very well-orchestrated marriages, the last one of which - to Nero - however proved fatal.

 

Tacitus writes that, when appearing in public, Poppaea liked to cover her head with a veil to arouse the curiosity of bystanders (Annales, XIII, 45), a detail that certainly plays into the present composition’s narrative. Indeed, viewers would have no doubt appreciated the artist’s decision to paint a figure cloaked in a transparent veil – a play on the concepts of concealment and revelation, and by association on the nature of the act of painting itself – together with his mastery in rendering the fabric’s texture. In sixteenth-century France, this kind of veil was known as “gaze à la romaine”, making it a particularly apt choice for a classical subject. The same “gaze” also appears in another type of representation of feminine beauty that originated during the same period at the School of Fontainebleau, known as Lady at her Toilet (for an example see fig. 2), which bears direct resemblance to François Clouet’s Lady in Her Bath (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., fig. 3). All three compositions centre on representations of nudity and female beauty, articulated according to different narrative expedients. Interestingly, the present is the only one to reference directly a historical and literary figure, an element that would have certainly appealed to the learned members of the French court. Similarly, contemporary viewers might have also recognised in the Poppaea Sabina or of the Lady at her Toilet the features of specific figures at court, most likely royal mistresses. Foremost amongst these was Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566), the favourite of King Henri II (1519-1559), François’ son and heir.

 

A successful composition, the Poppaea Sabina was painted by more than one artist, yet versions of a quality as fine as the present one’s remain rare. One exception is the panel in the Musée d'art et d'histoire in Geneva (oil on panel, 82.5 x 66 cm), which presents the same mid-length format as the present painting, whilst lesser copies often only concentrate on the face, or the bust, or do not include the cartouche. The inscription on the Geneva picture bears a different wording of the subject’s name to the Tomasso Brothers panel, but variations do occur (Princeton University Art Museum, “POMPEA SABINA”; Sotheby’s Paris, 23 June 2004, lot 1, “NON QUAE”) and, notably, in the 1584 inventory of the collection of Don Álvaro de Mendoza, Bishop of Palencia (d. 1586), a painting described as “un retrato de ponpea sabina en su marco” (a portrait of Poppaea Sabina in its frame) is listed. This entry most likely reflects the wording on the painting’s own inscription, and not the Spanish spelling, which would have been “Popea Sabina”. Given the specificity of this record, it is possible that the portrait owned by Don Álvaro de Mendoza corresponds to the present panel.

 

The identification of portraits of Poppaea Sabina in historic archives is complicated by the fact that the subject rapidly came to be described simply as a “Roman lady” or “Roman courtesan”. Examples of this custom can be found already in the sixteenth century in the inventories of the collections of the influential statesman Anne, Duke of Montmorency (1493-1567), of the French Queen Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589) and of the sculptor Germain Pilon (c. 1525-1590). Later, a 1692 inventory at Fontainebleau mentions as part of the Valois possessions “a courtesan with gauze veil painted on wood”. Nevertheless, the clear record in the 1584 inventory of the Bishop of Palencia, together with a further one in the 1689 inventory of Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna (1637–1689), 8^th Duke and Prince of Paliano and Gran Constable to the Kingdom of Naples (“Poppea Sabina ignuda coperta con un velo”), securely attest to the present composition’s fortune.

 

 

 

Related Literature

J. Adhémar, “French Sixteenth Century Genre Paintings”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 8, 1945, pp. 191-195

J. Thirion, S. Béguin and B. Jestaz eds., L'École de Fontainebleau, exh. cat., Paris, Grand Palais, 18 October 1972-15 January 1973, Paris, 1972

J. J. Lévêque, L'École de Fontainebleau, Neuchâtel, 1984

K. Michahelles, “Catherine de’ Medici’s 1589 Inventory at the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris”, The Furniture History Society, vol. 38, 2002, pp. 1-39

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

Stock number

P ~ 197