Gallery Label Pourbus was court painter of Archduke Albert in Brussels when in 1600 he went to Italy at the invitation of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. This portrait must depict the Duke of Mantua's daughter, Margherita, to judge from Pourbus's full-length portrait of her dated 1605 in the Uffizi, Florence. In this period Rubens also worked for Vincenzo Gonzaga, but he eagerly left the painting of formal portraits and a gallery of "beauties" to Pourbus, who in 1611 became Maria de' Medici's court painter in Paris.
Notes Margherita Gonzaga was the eldest daughter of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and Eleonora de' Medici (sister of Marie de' Medici). In 1606 she married Henry of Lorraine, duc de Bar. A similar half-length portrait has been recorded in the Alejandro E. Shaw collection, Buenos Aires; a full-length signed portrait by Pourbus, possibly of Margherita Gonzaga was formerly in the Uffizi, Florence (no. 3428), and is now in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence (no. 2279).
Provenance [Horace Buttery, London, in 1894]; Collis P. Huntington, New York (until d. 1900; life interest to his widow, Arabella D. Huntington, later [from 1913] Mrs. Henry E. Huntington, 1900–d. 1924; life interest to their son, Archer Milton Huntington, 1924–terminated in 1925)
Exhibition History London. Grafton Galleries. "Fair Women," Summer 1894, no. 28 (lent by Horace Buttery).
Honolulu Academy of Arts. "Four Centuries of European Painting," December 8, 1949–January 29, 1950, no. 3.
Art Gallery of Toronto. "Fifty Paintings by Old Masters," April 21–May 21, 1950, no. 4.
Palm Beach. Society of the Four Arts. "Spanish Painting," January 11–February 6, 1952, no. 8 (as "Infanta Isabella of Spain," by Alonzo Sanchez Coello).
Little Rock. Arkansas Arts Center. "Five Centuries of European Painting," May 16–October 26, 1963, unnumbered cat. (p. 16).
New York. Costume Institute. "Vanity Fair," December 15, 1977–September 4, 1978, not in catalogue (as "Portrait of a Woman").
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed," December 6, 2001–March 17, 2002, no. 34.
References Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings . New York, 1940, pp. 225–26, ill.Letter to Margaretta Salinger . May 24, 1945, attributes it to Pourbus and identifies the sitter as Margherita Gonzaga on the basis of comparison with portraits of her mother, Eleonora de' Medici (Palazzo Pitti, Florence, and New York art market); tentatively dates it between 1601 and 1603.The Book of Costume . New York, 1948, vol. 1, p. 466, no. 1232, ill., tentatively dates it 1590.Art Quarterly 15 (Spring 1952), pp. 38, 43–44 n. 7, fig. 4 [text similar to Ref. Soria 1945], attributes it to Pourbus and identifies the sitter as Margherita Gonzaga on the basis of comparison with portraits of her mother, Eleonora de' Medici (Palazzo Pitti, Florence, and New York art market); tentatively dates it between 1601 and 1603.Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2001, p. 23, ill. (color), as painted 1625–30.
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