Costanza da Sommaia, ca. 1540

  • Agnolo Bronzino, Italian, 1503-1572

Oil on wood panel

  • Unframed: 17 × 11 3/8 inches (43.2 × 28.9 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, General Membership Fund

35.8

Milan, Treccani collection (according to Baccheschi, but almost certainly erroneous)?

Great Britain, Kent, Chislehurst, Frognal, Collection Robert Marsham-Townshend, Earl Sydney (until 1915)

Kent, Chislehurst, Frognal, auction, Sydney Collection (Knight, Frank & Rutley), 7 June 1915, lot. 10, repr. (as by Bronzino, Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo)

New York, Lilienfeld Galleries (dealer--1935), from whom purchased by the DIA in 1935.

A Catalogue of the Sydney Collection at Frognal, Chislehurst, Kent. Sales cat., London, June 7, 1915, p. 2, no. 10 (ill.). [as “A bust Portrait of Eleonora Toledo”] Richardson, E.P. "Costanza da Sommaia." Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 14, no. 7 (April 1935): 88–90, pp. 88–90 (ill.). Berenson, Bernard. Pitture Italiane del Rinascimento. Milan, 1936, p. 98. [as "Bust of a Young Woman"] Richardson, E.P., ed. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Catalogue of Paintings. Detroit, 1944, p. 18, no. 444. [dated about 1540] Emiliani, Andrea. Il Bronzino. Busto Arsizio, 1960, p. 78. [doubted Bronzino attribution; dated ca. 1540] Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, vol. 1. London, 1963, p. 41. [as by the studio of Bronzino] Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts: A Checklist of the Paintings Acquired Before June 1965. Detroit, 1965, p. 18. Matteoli, Anna. "La retrattistica del Bronzino nel 'Limbo.'" Commentari 20 (October–December 1969): 281-316, pp. 285–286, fig. 3 (ill.). Fredericksen, Burton B. and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, 1972, p. 36. [as "Portrait of Costanza da Sommaia?" by Bronzino] Bacceschi, Edi. L'opera completa del Bronzino. Milan, 1973, p. 106, no. 131 (ill.).

Agnolo Bronzino, Costanza da Sommaia, ca. 1540, oil on wood panel. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, General Membership Fund, 35.8.