Francesco Solimena, 'Portrait of a Lady', about 1740

This portrait is full of gentle curves and lustrous surfaces: an ornate silver ewer stands behind a woman whose shimmering drapery falls in folds around her. She fixes us with a piercing gaze as she leans against a table and toys with the closed fan in her right hand. We don't know the woman’s identity, but her elegant costume alludes to her wealth and status. She is outdoors, or possibly standing at the edge of an architectural portico or archway, and the sky behind her is cloudy.

This portrait was long attributed to the celebrated Neapolitan artist Francesco Solimena, but this changed when it entered the National Gallery’s collection in 1955 – it was thought instead to be the work of an anonymous painter from Naples. However, recent conservation and cleaning revealed the painting’s high quality, and it has now been reattributed to Solimena. Another picture, A Female Figure resting on a Sword was accepted as being by Solimena when it entered the Gallery’s collection in 1926, but it is now thought unlikely to be by him or his studio.

Solimena was not only a portraitist but a painter of mythological and allegorical subjects, such as Dido receiving Aeneas and Cupid disguised as Ascanius and An Allegory of Louis XIV, both painted much earlier on in his career. This portrait can be dated to about 1740, when Solimena was around 80 years old. Though he adopted a darker, more sombre style in his later works, rich colouring heightened by light effects characterised his paintings throughout his career.

The portrait once belonged to the Hungarian art historian Frederick Antal, who fled to Britain from Germany when the Nazi party took power in the 1930s. It was bequeathed to the Gallery in his memory by his wife.