Portrait of the Marchesa Cunegonda Misciattelli with Her Infant Son and His Nurse
Portrait of the Marchesa Cunegonda Misciattelli with Her Infant Son and His Nurse
- Artist
- Horace Vernet
- Artist Dates
- 1789-1863
- Artist Nationality
- French
- Title
- Portrait of the Marchesa Cunegonda Misciattelli with Her Infant Son and His Nurse
- Date
- 1830
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 132.1 x 104.1 cm (52 x 41 in)
- K Number
- K1035
- Repository
- University of Arizona Museum of Art
- Accession Number
- 1961.013.027
- Notes
Provenance
Marchesa Cunegonda Cocchi Misciattelli [d. 1842], Rome; Marchesa Colocci Vespucci Honorati, Rome. (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi [1878-1955] Rome-Florence); sold to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955] on 1 June 1936; gift to University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1961, no. 1961.013.027.
Catalogue Entry
Horace Vernet
Portrait of the Marchesa Cunegonda Misciattelli with Her Infant Son and His Nurse
K1035
Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Art Gallery (KR 61.35), since 1951. Oil on canvas. 52 x 41 in. (132.1 x 104.1 cm.). Inscribed (as though carved in stone) at right: II VERNET Rome 1830. Extensive tear in canvas in area of the nurse's head. Relined, cleaned and restored by Pichetto in 1937. Tucson, 1951, Cat. No. 24. A young lady, looking to the left, is seated, playing a keyboard instrument. Her hair is coiffed in a classical style; she wears a low-necked white dress with gathered bodice and sleeves, tied with a bright striped sash at the waist, adapted from peasant attire. A velvet robe is around her knees. Leaning against the back of her chair is a young woman in southern Italian peasant garb (scooped-neck blouse, silk brocade skirt, laced bodice), holding an infant. She is apparently a wet-nurse; she looks down at her charge, whose left hand she holds with her left, embracing the baby with her right arm. The blond baby, enveloped in embroidered bands of swaddling, reaches toward the mother with its right arm. The long coral pin in the nurse's hair was meant to ward off the evil eye; she wears earrings of gold leaves and pearl drops. The pilaster at the right is decorated with a panel in the manner of Antique Roman grotesque painting. A lamp or vase is at the top and also a stork and rabbit. Ivy leaves are against the wall to the left. The Marchesa Cunegonda was the daughter of Gian Felice Cocchi of Città della Pieve (Umbria). She was the first wife of the Marchese Geremia Antonio Misciattelli (1793-1865) whom she married in 1815. Of their children, no male heirs survived to maturity. The Marchesa died in 1842 (birth date unknown). Misciattelli married twice again. The Marchese was a prominent amateur and a close friend of the German landscape painter Franz Ludwig Katel.(1) Though the infant in K1035 has been referred to as a boy, there seems to be no reason for doing so. Suida stressed the neo-Classical aspects of K1035, describing it as 'not inferior to the works of Ingres'.(2) Venturi singled out the vitality with which the painting was executed, stressing the luminism of the rendering of the velvets, jewels, embroideries, etc.(3) The depiction of the Marchesa was characterized as 'of Davidian solidity in contrast to the Piazzettesque, more emotional portrayal of the nurse'.(4) Longhi found the vivacity, chromatic vigor and compositional harmony of K1035 such as to make it one of the most beautiful examples of Vernet's portraiture during his Roman period.(5) The portrait is extremely Raphaelesque in style –the characterization of the baby conforms to that of many of the High Renaissance master's Holy Infants, that of the mother follows such models as the Donna Velata (Florence, Palazzo Pitti). The triangular composition formed by the three participants, placed within the rectangular confine of the campus, is also a typically High Renaissance pictorial convention, popular among neo-Classical artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The year in which Vernet painted K1035, the entire French Academy, with the exception of the painter himself, fled Rome during the Carbonari uprising. Vernet was appointed French ambassador to the Holy See in 1830, entrusted with considerable power at this time.(6) Perhaps his diplomatic functions may have first led him to the Misciattelli family, which was related to Pope Leo XII (1760-1829). Possibly the confused events of the year in which Vernet completed the Kress canvas may have led to its omission from previous lists of the artist's oeuvre. The canvas is close in style to the High Renaissance approach used by Vernet in his portrait of Madame J.-G. Eynard Lullin of 1831 (Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire). Provenance: Marchesa Cunegonda Misciattelli. Marchesa Colocci Vespucci Honorati (a descendant of the Misciattelli family), Rome, sold to Contini Bonacossi. A. Contini Bonacossi, Florence. Kress acquisition 1936.
References
(1) Information courtesy of the Marchese Paolo Misciattelli, letter of 27/II/69, Kress Archive. See also Libro d'oro della nobiltà Italiana, 1918-19, IV, p. 434. The Misciattelli family were originally from Orvieto, then resided in Rome, where the Kress portrait was painted. (2) William Suida, certificate of Apr. 1936 in Kress Archive. (3) Adolfo Venturi, certificate of 19/IV/36 in Kress Archive. (4) G. Fiocco, certificate in Kress Archive. Other certificates by F. F. Mason Perkins and Raimond van Marle. (5) Kress Archive. (6) Silvestre, op. cit. Note 1, p. 49.