After Paris Bordone, 'Portrait of a Young Woman', probably 17th century

A young woman gazes provocatively out of the painting at us. Her head is tilted to one side and her eyes directly meet ours. A long gold necklace lies on her flushed chest and loops down between her breasts. She rests one hand in her lap and the other on a green velvet cushion decorated with gold braid. In the fingers of her right hand she holds a posy including a little yellow flower. A red carnation, sprig of thyme and frond of white jasmine are tucked into her chemise, which has slipped from her shoulder to reveal her left breast.

In some paintings a carnation seems to have been included as a token of fidelity, so the flower was popular in betrothal portraits. This may not be the portrait of a particular woman as her state of undress and her direct look would have been regarded as shocking. The painting was certainly intended to have erotic appeal. It could perhaps have been a painting of an ideal beauty, a mistress portrayed for her lover, or the portrait of a Venetian courtesan. Pictures of alluring young women were popular subjects for sixteenth-century Venetian painters such as Titian, and especially Palma Vecchio. Palma’s A Blonde Woman of about 1520 also reveals a breast and holds a posy of flowers.

This is probably a seventeenth-century copy of an original painting by Paris Bordone, rather than just a picture painted in his style. There is at least one other existing version by Bordone himself. The way the highlights here have been painted as spots on the gilt ornament of the cushion is very similar to Bordone’s technique. The slight flush on the lady’s upper chest is also common to Bordone’s other paintings of women, such as the Portrait of a Young Woman, and is rarely seen in the work of other painters. These details suggest that the artist who painted this picture had seen an original by Bordone.

The painting has been severely flattened and probably damaged by heat when a second canvas was applied to the reverse of the original to strengthen it some time before 1870. Most of the surface of the painting is cracked. It is worn in several places – especially the flesh of the woman’s left shoulder, the shadows of her hair, and her crimson drapery – and the varnish has also darkened. This damage has altered the painting’s appearance.