Portrait of an Elderly Woman

Description This unknown woman wears the somber black dress and white double cap of a widow. She is seated in a chair of simple design, identifiable as Florentine and of a type associated with the austere lifestyle of the earlier religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98). The simplicity of the colors, directness of the sitter's demeanor, and composition reflect the "reform" movement in Florentine painting in the later 1500s. The paint surface is now damaged and it has not been possible to identify the artist. For another portrait from about the same time of a widow by the famous woman portraitist, Lavinia Fontana, see Walters 37.1915.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
7/24/1939	Treatment	coated; varnish removed or reduced
9/08/1942	Treatment	other
3/01/1959	Treatment	other
3/12/1973	Treatment	cleaned; coated; filled; inpainted; varnish removed or reduced; x-ray

Provenance Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1881 catalogue: no. 234; 1897 catalogue: no. 501, as Hans Holbein the Younger]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters with the Massarenti Collection, 1902