References Catalogue of Paintings Purchased by the Rev. John Sanford During his Residence in Italy: 1830 and Following Years . n.d., no. 167 [see Ref. Nicolson 1955], attributes it to Masaccio.Catalogue Raisonné of Pictures etc. the Property of the Rev. John Sanford . London, 1847, no. 1 [see Ref. Nicolson 1955], as "purchased at Florence"; attributes it to Masaccio.Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters and by Deceased Masters of the British School . Exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts. London, 1877, p. 33, no. 181, attributes it to Masaccio and says the man "holds an escutcheon bearing the arms of the Portanari [sic] family, the founders of the hospital at Florence".Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst , n.s., 6, no. 1 (1895), p. 17, attributes it to Cosimo Rosselli.Gazette des beaux-arts , 3rd ser., 15 (March 1896), p. 200, tentatively attributes it to Paolo Uccello.The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance . New York, 1896, p. 129, tentatively lists it as by Uccello.Catalogue of the Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . New York, 1905, p. 115, no. 256, assigns it to the school of Masaccio, and identifies the arms as those of the Portinari.The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance . 3rd ed. New York, 1909, p. 186, calls it "Profiles of Woman and Man of Portinari Family," by Uccello.Art in America 2 (December 1913), pp. 44–55, fig. 1, attributes it to Filippo Lippi, dates it about 1440, and suggests that it represents Lorenzo di Ranieri Scolari and his wife Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti; compares it with the Portrait of a Lady by Lippi in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.Art in America 2 (June 1914), p. 322, accepts Breck's [see Ref. 1914] attribution and dating.Art in America 2 (February 1914), pp. 170–73, dates it 1436.Catalogue of Paintings . 1st ed. New York, 1914, p. 131, as Florentine, second quarter of the fifteenth century.Art in America 2 (August 1914), p. 379.Art in America 2 (February 1914), pp. 169–70, confirms Breck's identification of the sitters, but rejects the attribution to Lippi, considering it closer to Domenico Veneziano; dates it 1444.Sandro del Botticello . Dresden, 1923, pp. 54–56, attributes it to Botticelli, regarding it as the earliest of a group of portraits executed when he was still studying with Filippo Lippi.The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting . 10, The Hague, 1928, pp. 237, 240, 459–60 n. 2, fig. 156, tentatively attributes it to Uccello but lists it with works "that might possibly be ascribed to Fra Filippo".in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler . 23, Leipzig, 1929, p. 273, lists it as by Lippi.Paolo Uccello . Paris, 1929, pp. 21–23, 26, pl. VIII, attributes it to Uccello and compares it with a portrait in the National Gallery, London.L'arte 33 (January 1930), p. 69 n. 1, attributes it to the School of Filippo Lippi.Bollettino d'arte 26 (August 1932), pp. 53, 66, fig. 36, attributes it to Lippi, possibly assisted by a helper, and dates it about 1448.Italian Pictures of the Renaissance . Oxford, 1932, p. 288, lists it as "A Medici (?) Bride and her Husband, a Portinari"; considers it in great part the work of Lippi.Pantheon 15 (January–June 1935), p. 96, ill. p. 95, attributes it to Lippi and dates it about 1440.Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, Domenico Veneziano . Rome, [1935], p. 87 [French ed., 1937, p. 94], includes it in a list of works with questionable attributions to Uccello.Pitture italiane del rinascimento . Milan, 1936, p. 247, assigns it to Lippi's late period.Art Bulletin 18 (March 1936), p. 68 n. 23, pp. 88, 91, 96, 101, fig. 10, lists it as by Lippi's shop, with portraits that date 1450–75; compares the landscape with those of Uccello.Rivista d'arte 18 (1936), p. 67 n. 2, considers it similar to and contemporaneous with Lippi's Annunciation in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, and calls it probably a portrait of Scolari and his wife.Letter . March 24, 1938, attributes it to an artist closely connected with Uccello.Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter . 1, Cambridge, Mass., 1939, p. 220, fig. 12., ascribes it to an artist in Lippi's shop, comparing the woman with one in Fra Carnevale's Birth of the Virgin (MMA 35.121).The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings . New York, 1940, pp. 29–30, ill., attributes it to an assistant in Lippi's shop, and dates it shortly before the middle of the fifteenth century; states that it may be a marriage portrait of Lorenzo Scolari and his wife.Fra Filippo Lippi . Vienna, 1942, pp. 48, 76, fig. 119, attributes it to Lippi, dates it not later than 1440, and calls it a marriage portrait probably showing the Scolari coat of arms.The Book of Costume . New York, 1948, vol. 1, pp. 250, 252, no. 703, ill. p. 251 (cropped).Letter . December 29, 1949, tentatively suggests placing it in the very early period of Domenico Veneziano.Filippo Lippi . Florence, 1949, p. 209, fig. 73, attributes it to Lippi and dates it towards the end of the 1450s.Paragone 3 (September 1952), p. 43, dates it before the female portrait in Berlin, which he places about 1450, and observes the Flemish character of the background.Letter to Margaretta Salinger . October 7, 1954, tentatively accepts Schmarsow's attribution to Botticelli and dates it about 1459–60, when Botticelli was the assistant of Fra Filippo at Prato; identifies the arms as those of Francesco di Marco Datini, indicating that the man might be one of Francesco's grandsons.Burlington Magazine 97 (July 1955), pp. 208–9, 213, no. 29, attributes it to Lippi and quotes manuscript catalogues of the Sanford collection in which it was attributed to Masaccio.in "Jan van Eyck and the Italian Renaissance." Venezia e l'Europa: atti del XVIII congresso internazionale di storia dell'arte . Venice, 1956, p. 63, fig. 11, considers it the earliest Italian portrait showing a betrothed couple in a domestic setting, and mentions Netherlandish examples of this type.Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School . London, 1963, vol. 1, p. 113.The Portrait in the Renaissance . Princeton, 1966, pp. 41, 44, 48, 59, 309 n. 63, fig. 41, calls it the earliest female profile portrait and attributes it to Lippi, dating it about 1440.Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art 38 (1969), p. 47, fig. 2, dates it about 1435–40.Homeless Paintings of the Renaissance . Bloomington, 1970, pp. 233, 253, fig. 407 [same text as Ref. Berenson (Bollettino d'arte) 1932].Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 29 (June 1971), p. 434, ill., dates it early in Lippi's career, about 1440–45.Apollo 94 (August 1971), p. 152, fig. 3.in L'opera completa di Paolo Uccello . Milan, 1971, p. 102, no. 87, ill., includes it among pictures formerly attributed to Uccello.Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School . New York, 1971, pp. 85–87, ill., date it shortly after the beginning of the 1440s, suggest that it was an engagement or marriage portrait, and identify the man as a member of the Scolari family.Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections . Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 106, 522, 605.Looking at Pictures with Bernard Berenson . New York, 1974, pp. 154–55, ill. [same text as Ref. Berenson (Bollettino d'arte) 1932].Filippo Lippi . Milan, 1975, pp. 96, 103, 167, 203–4, no. 19, fig. 38.Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 42 (1979), p. 269, fig. 16, dates it about 1440 and notes a relation to Flemish painting.Städel-Jahrbuch , n.s., 7 (1979), pp. 117, 125 nn. 47–48, fig. 25, discusses its influence on Ghirlandaio.The Metropolitan Museum of Art . New York, 1980, pp. 227, 232–33, fig. 404 (color).Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 38 (Summer 1980), pp. 56–57, 59–61, fig. 50, ill. front and back covers (color, overall and detail), believe it was inspired by a Flemish painting and possibly commissioned to commemorate the birth of Ranieri Scolari to Lorenzo Scolari and Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti in 1444; call it "the earliest Italian double portrait in the true sense, and . . . among the earliest European portraits with a domestic setting".Filippo Lippi Studies: Naturalism, Style and Iconography in Early Renaissance Art . New York, 1982, p. 36 n. 40, pp. 102, 129 n. 19, p. 131 n. 39, challenges the proposed connection with early Flemish wedding portraits, stating that "the betrothal scene is another case of Flemish and Italian artists dealing with the same new pictorial subject in ignorance of each other's solutions".Italia e Fiandra nella pittura del quattrocento . Milan, 1983, p. 192, observes that the interior setting is of Flemish taste; relates it to other works by Lippi influenced by Flemish painting.Oxford, China, and Italy: Writings in Honour of Sir Harold Acton on his Eightieth Birthday . London, 1984, p. 231.Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 47, no. 1 (1984), pp. 224–25, fig. 12, rejects the supposed connection with Flemish painting; states that it may commemorate a betrothal or wedding, or the birth of a son.Banchieri fiorentini e pittori di Fiandria . Modena, 1984, pp. 14–15, 56, fig. 20, discusses the link with Flemish painting, emphasizing the influence of Jan van Eyck.Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48, no. 2 (1985), pp. 133–37, fig. 1, discusses the window format and compares it to dedication miniatures in manuscripts; finds the lack of psychological contact between the man and woman difficult to understand in the context of an engagement, marriage, or birth of an heir; suggests instead a connection to the Song of Solomon, 2:9 ("behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows . . . ").Renaissance and Reformation , n.s., 10, no. 1 (1986), pp. 30, 33, 35, 46 n. 35, fig. 1, interprets the proposed reference to the Song of Solomon as indicative of the couple's sacramental love based on the mystical marriage of Christ to the church; dates it about 1445.Source: Notes in the History of Art 5 (Winter 1986), pp. 7–14, fig. 1, suggests it is a conjugal portrait, relating the window motif to a verse in the Song of Solomon (2:9) and to various exegetical works.Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 48/49 (1987–88), pp. 97–121, fig. 1, argues that the headdress worn by the woman, a symbol of her noble rank, places the portrait in the 1460s, concluding that it cannot be associated with the marriage of Angiola Sapiti and Lorenzo Scolari in 1436; identifies the woman as Yolande de France, duchess of Savoy and Piedmont; suggests that Giacomo Ferrero d'Ormea, Capitano dei Cavalli in service to Yolande, whose coat of arms matches that in the portrait, might have commissioned it in 1467 as an expression of his loyalty to her.Journal of Art 1 (February–March 1989), p. 29, supports Jansen's [see Ref. 1987] identification of the sitters.Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 52 (1991), pp. 17–42, fig. 1, rejects Jansen's [see Ref. 1987] dating and identification of the sitters, finding the intimacy between them and the inclusion of only the man's coat of arms unlikely for a depiction of Yolande de France and Giacomo Ferrero d'Ormea; accepts that it may be a marriage or betrothal portrait of Lorenzo Scolari and Angiola Sapiti, but challenges the connection to Lippi, offering a tentative attribution and dating to Piero della Francesca, about 1435.The Expanding Discourse : Feminism and Art History . New York, 1992, pp. 43, 50, 54 n. 37, fig. 3.Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work, with a Complete Catalogue . London, 1993, pp. 71, 85, 88, 130, 182, 277, 350 n. 19 (from p. 349), pp. 379, 385–86, 413, 468, 510–11, no. 16, colorpls. 45–46 (overall and detail), pl. 217, dates it about 1435–36 on the basis of style, noting that neither the coat of arms nor the woman's costume permit secure dating; believes it is the earliest Italian double portrait, one of the two earliest Italian portraits featuring a woman and a "portrait-like description of architecture and landscape"; rejects the notion that this portrait may be dependent on Netherlandish precedents; notes that the arrangement of a figure within a window frame, gesturing to an ancillary figure placed in an enclosed space, is based on a manuscript convention; states that the woman's death might explain the spatial and pychological separation of the subjects, but finds no other evidence that she might have died.Immagini da meditare: ricerche su dipinti di tema religioso nei secoli XII-XV . Milan, 1994, p. 423 n. 38, dates it close to the middle of the fifteenth century.Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa: Das Porträt der Lisa del Giocondo, Legende und Geschichte . Frankfurt am Main, 1994, pp. 32–33, fig. 14, discusses the hand gestures.Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio d'Andrea . Florence, 1995, pp. 219–21, fig. 4.Il Maestro della Natività di Castello . Florence, 1995, p. 71, ill. p. 120, as by Lippi; dates it between 1450 and 1470.in Il ritratto: Gli artisti, i modelli, la memoria . Florence, 1996, p. 63, fig. 79, dates it about 1437.in "Un chef-d'œuvre restauré: le 'Portrait d'un vieillard et d'un jeune garçon' de Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494)." Revue du Louvre 3 (June 1996), p. 49, fig. 11.Porträt und Accessoire: Eine Bildnisform im 16. Jahrhundert . Berlin, 1997, pp. 148, 303–4, fig. 98, dates it about 1425/36.Filippo Lippi . Florence, 1997, pp. 92–93, no. 12, ill., date it about 1435–36.Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity . Manchester, 1997, pp. 52–53, fig. 14, as attributed to Lippi, about 1435–45; describes the sitters' clothing and calls the work "a commemoration of a woman," noting that engagement or wedding portraits "were most unusual in Florence during the fifteenth century, and there is no evidence at all for portraits commissioned on the occassion of the birth of a child".in "How the Pictures Got Here." From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1998, p. 65.Leonardo e la scultura . Florence, 1999, pp. 34–35, fig. 78.Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter . New Haven, 1999, pp. 128–29, 134–35, 268 nn. 59–60, 64, 70, figs. 113, 115 (color, overall and detail), dates it to the early 1440s.Il gesto e la mano: convenzione e invenzione nel linguaggio figurativo fra Medioevo e Rinascimento . [Florence], 2000, pp. 28–29, fig. 35 (detail), dates it about 1460 and calls the attribution unsettled; finds that the man's gesture recalls that of the angel of the Annunciation.Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence . Cambridge, 2000, p. 96, fig. 15, relates the shadow cast by the man to the remark in Pliny's "Natural History" that portraiture originated with the circumscription of a lover's shadow falling on a wall.in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women . Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2001, pp. 106–9, 172, 174 n. 7, p. 190, no. 3, ill. (color, overall and detail), comments that the prominence of the woman in relation to the man might suggest that her family commissioned the work to celebrate her betrothal; dates it about 1438/44 and notes similarities in Botticelli's Woman at a Window (Smeralda Brandini?) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanni degli Albizzi Tornabuoni in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women . Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2001, pp. 93–94, observe that "wearing pearls and rings with precious stones testified to the marital status of the young women portrayed" in portraits of the period.in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women . Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2001, pp. 65, 67, 84 n. 22, discusses the woman's dress and remarks that her "decorously bound and restrained" hairstyle indicates she is married and no longer betrothed.Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, & Fine Clothing . Baltimore, 2002, pp. 192, 194, fig. 9.3.in Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century . Washington, 2003, p. 179 n. 27.in Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century . Washington, 2003, p. 366 n. 38.From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400–1500 . New Haven, 2004, pp. 22, 212, 288 nn. 82, 83, colorpl. 227, discusses the numerous Northern elements of the work, including the attention to textures of jewels and textiles, the "fashionable Flemish-style horned headdress" worn by the woman, and the inclusion of the coat of arms, which she finds reminiscent of escutcheons in Netherlandish portraits; agrees that "the composition itself seems to derive from a Northern source, exemplified by the dedicatory miniature of the Lovell Lectionary" [see Ref. Ringbom 1985]; relates it to the double portrait attributed to Lippi [see Ref. Craven 1997] and to an early sixteenth-century German portrait depicting a man addressing a woman through a window [ill. in E. Buchner, "Das deutsche Bildnis der Spätgotik und der frühen Dürerzeit," Berlin, 1953, pl. 207]; calls these works "surviving examples of a double-portrait type used in contexts where sitters needed to be differentiated by status," either of social class or gender, adding that "the formula may have been favored for betrothal portraits".Italian Paintings 1250–1450 in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art . Philadelphia, 2004, p. 382 n. 4, dates it after 1440, calling it one of the earliest surviving examples of independent Florentine female profile portraits, but suggests that instead of depicting a married couple, the painting more probably shows "the homage of a man to his idealized or poetical lover".in From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2005, pp. 52, 147, 150–53, 166, 178, no. 4, ill. (color, overall and detail) [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale . . . ," Milan, 2004, pp. 52, 147–48, 150–53, 166, 178, no. 4, ill. (color, overall and detail)], dates it about 1440–44 and compares it with an Annunciation (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome) by Lippi of the early 1440s.Burlington Magazine 147 (February 2005), p. 137.Source: Notes in the History of Art 26 (Fall 2006), pp. 16, 20–21, fig. 3, discusses the perspectival metaphor of the open window and states that the MMA painting "demands to be read as a pictorial meditation on the nature of the Albertian perspectival fiction".I tribunali del matrimonio (secoli XV–XVIII) . Bologna, 2006, pp. 672–75, fig. 3 (detail), agrees that it was probably commissioned on the occasion of the marriage of Lorenzo di Ranieri Scolari and Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti in 1436; calls the window a third protagonist in the composition, serving to establish communication between the two figures; refers to the two roles played by the figures, the man's active and animated, the woman's quiet and reserved; relates the composition to a portrait of a woman of about 1475 by the school of Botticelli, transformed by later repainting into Saint Catherine (Lindenau Museum, Altenburg).in At Home in Renaissance Italy . Exh. cat., Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 2006, pp. 97–98, 361, 374 n. 58, no. 141, colorpl. 6.8, dates it about 1436–38; believes that it is probably the 1436 marriage portrait of Lorenzo Scolari and Angiola Sapiti but adds that "it also presupposes the conception of a child, by showing Angiola in her Virgin's 'thalamus' and turning Lorenzo into a quasi-Gabriel".Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65 (Summer 2007), pp. 12, 14, fig. 10 (print of Marquand gallery).in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2008, pp. 255–56, no. 118, ill. (color), dates it about 1440–44.in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2008, pp. 18, 26 n. 8, fig. 4 (color detail).Paolo Uccello: Artist of the Florentine Renaissance Republic . Saarbrücken, Germany, 2008, pp. 331–32, no. 63, includes it with Rejected Attributions to Uccello, supporting the attribution to Lippi; dates it to ca. early 1440s.in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2008, pp. 9, 103, 124, notes that the word "lealta" [loyalty] embroidered on the woman's sleeve refers "to the quality most desired in a wife".Parmigianino's "Antea": A Beautiful Artifice . Exh. cat., Frick Collection. New York, 2008, pp. 43–44, 67–68 nn. 301–3, fig. 38 (color), states that the picture probably represents "a knight and the lady to whom he has devoted himself (and who is most certainly therefore not his wife)"; suggests that Lippi deliberately depicted the figures on different planes, with their eyes not meeting, in order to convey unrequited desire.in Wedded Bliss: The Marriage of Art and Ceremony . Exh. cat., Peabody Essex Museum. Salem, Mass., 2008, p. 50, fig. 9 (color).
Add to My Met Gallery
Print
List View
Enlarge
Zoom
