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Lot Essay
This portrait of an unidentified lady in the guise of Mary Magdalene is a characteristic work by Puligo, a gifted pupil of Andrea del Sarto, who by the time of his relatively early death in 1527 had built up one of the most successful portrait practices in Florence. Like a number of portraits by the artist that have been in British collections, this picture was formerly attributed to Andrea del Sarto, in whose workshop Puligo completed his training and whose technique he clearly studied very closely.
This particularly refined example is one of very few portraits in which the sitter, shown in a sumptuous blue dress, is given the attribute of a saint whose name she presumably bore: another portrait of a lady as the Madgdalene is now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (Capretti and Padovani, op. cit., p. 48, no. 41); one of a lady as Saint Barbara is in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (ibid., p. 49, no. 50); and another in the guise of Saint Catharine of Alexandria was sold in these Rooms, 3 December 2013, lot 20 (£170,500).
Maria Maddalena was a popular name in Florence in the sixteenth century and the saint held particular significance for the artist: it was in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, in Borgo Pinti, that Puligo’s great altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints (1525-26) hung, a work that was strongly influenced by his master’s celebrated masterpiece, The Madonna of the Harpies (1517; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi).
This particularly refined example is one of very few portraits in which the sitter, shown in a sumptuous blue dress, is given the attribute of a saint whose name she presumably bore: another portrait of a lady as the Madgdalene is now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (Capretti and Padovani, op. cit., p. 48, no. 41); one of a lady as Saint Barbara is in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (ibid., p. 49, no. 50); and another in the guise of Saint Catharine of Alexandria was sold in these Rooms, 3 December 2013, lot 20 (£170,500).
Maria Maddalena was a popular name in Florence in the sixteenth century and the saint held particular significance for the artist: it was in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, in Borgo Pinti, that Puligo’s great altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints (1525-26) hung, a work that was strongly influenced by his master’s celebrated masterpiece, The Madonna of the Harpies (1517; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi).