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"The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 29127 (as Scipione Pulzone).
Zeri states the present painting was once part of a series of seven portraits of ladies of similar dimensions, made around 1580, once in Palazzo Farnese, Rome.
While visiting Rome in 1581, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne observed in his Journal de voyage of a visit to the Palazzo dei Cesarini at San Pietro in Vincoli: ‘il y a aussi les portraits des plus belles dames romaines vivantes et de la signora Clelia-Fascia Farnèse, sa femme, qui est, sinon la plus agréable, sans comparaison la plus amaible femme qui fût pour lors à Rome, ni que je sache ailleurs’.
Clelia Farnese (1557-1613) was the illegitimate daughter of the ‘gran cardinale’ Alessandro Farnese, and the niece of Pope Paul III. She received her education at the court of Urbino from her aunt, Duchess Vittoria Farnese, and aged only eight she was promised in marriage to the sixteen-year-old Giovan Giorgio Cesarini: from the Roman noble family. Her substantial dowry consisted of thirty thousand gold scudi in cash and jewellery, and the wedding was celebrated in 1571. Giovan Giorgio was famous for his dissolute lifestyle, thereby attaining his wife’s disapproval. Clelia Farnese was of strong character and took every occasion to publically condemn her husband’s libertine behaviour, as a number of letters to her father demonstrate. Clelia was celebrated by Rome’s high society for her grace and beauty and she soon became the greatest attraction among the social set of the city, even receiving a celebratory sonnet from Torquato Tasso.
Clelia, who openly enjoyed the admiration of her many suitors, after she was widowed in 1585, may have become attached to Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. Consequently, in 1597 her father forced her to leave Rome and marry Marchese Marco Pio di Savoia with whom she was to settle at Sassuolo, thereby being compelled to forget her former festive social life, laying to rest the scandals and defamatory rumours circulated against her. Clelia returned to Rome in 1601, remaining there until she died in 1613. In his Roman diary, Giacinto Gigli celebrated her with the following words: ‘[…] she was the most beautiful woman of her age, she was the daughter of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, about whom it was said that the Cardinal had three extremely beautiful things that it was almost impossible to have. These were the Palazzo de’ Farnesi, the church of the Gesù which he built, and the lady Clelia, his daughter’ ‘[...] fu questa la più bella donna che si trovasse a suo tempo, et fu figliola del Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, del quale si soleva dire, che tre cose estremamente belle haveva questo Cardinale, che era quasi impossibile di poterle arrivare. Queste erano il Palazzo de’ Farnesi, la Chiesa del Giesù da lui fabricata, et la Sig.ra Clelia sua figliola’." Dorotheum
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