Carved by Francesco Laurana, possibly in the late 1470s, this bust of an unknown woman is one of just a handful of female portrait busts by Laurana still in existence. Laurana was born in modern-day Croatia, then under the control of the Republic of Venice but spent most of his career traveling around the Italian peninsula and in southern France, where he died in 1502.
When this bust was found in the old harbor of Marseilles, in the early eighteenth century, it was believed to date from Roman times and to represent the empress Agrippina. Not until 1914 was it linked to other portraits by the elusive Laurana. Two years later, it was bought by Henry Clay Frick.
Laurana’s female portraits are often described as idealized images of their sitters. The artist created painstakingly polished surfaces, and the sitters are typically represented with a distinct lack of engagement with the viewer. Laurana seems to have been uninterested in simply replicating reality.
The bust was originally polychromed, so would have looked very different. The significance of the reliefs decorating the base has never been satisfactorily explained. The letters DMS on the relief—visible on an altar to the right of the blank tablet—are thought to be either a clue to the identity of the sitter, perhaps Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria, or the Latin initials of a dedication to the ancient Roman household deities called Manes.
Bust of a Woman
Far fewer male portraits are attributed to Laurana than portrait busts of women, possibly because the men are more varied and less easily recognized. Laurana's male heads—such as those in the large marble relief of Christ Carrying the Cross in the church of Saint-Didier, Avignon, and certain portraits in Sicily—are strongly characterized, even idiosyncratic. The surviving female busts are far more consistent in type and style. These include two named by inscriptions (one being the Frick's Beatrice of Aragon), several tentatively identified through comparison with other portraits, and at least two others known to be idealized, posthumous commemorations. Because they are so similar and so abstract, it is difficult to judge from the works themselves how closely they approximate a living likeness.
The lady portrayed in the present marble bust has not yet been identified. If the enigmatic reliefs decorating the base offer clues to her identity, their message has resisted translation. As the bust was discovered in Marseille, the work may date from after Laurana's return to France in 1477, and the sitter might be French. This portrait retains even fewer traces of individual particularity than the Beatrice of Aragon. The marble is composed entirely of harmonious shapes, suavely orchestrated curves, and smoothly flowing surfaces. Like Multscher's saint and Barbet's angel, Laurana's aristocratic ladies with their downcast eyes seem to withdraw from the quotidian distractions of life.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Said to have been discovered at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the Vieux Port of Marseille. Louis Hercule de Ricard Brégançon, Aix-en-Provence. Inherited from him by Madame de Narbonne, Paris. Marquise de Mailly-Nesle, Château de la Roche-Mailly, Requeil, Sarthe, and Paris. Duveen. Frick, 1916.
Source: Sculpture in The Frick Collection: Italian. Volume III. New York: The Frick Collection, 1970.
