Old Masters European Antique Oval Portrait of a Woman

ca. 1800

Portrait of a Beautiful Young Woman, ca. 1965. Oil on linen canvas, 8 x 10 inches. Framed measurement: 10.5 x 12.5 inches. Signed indistinctly lower left.

Neo-Expressionist painting depicts a young woman in luminous light. Encaustic on canvas, 13 x 16 inches. Unsigned. Minor paint loss along left edge.

Jacob Ferdinand Voet (Antwerp 1639 - Paris 1689) Atelier Portrait of the Young Ortensia Mancini, Duchess of La Meilleraye (Rome 1646 - Chelsea 1699) Oil on canvas 75 x 61 cm. - exquisite gilded and lacquered wooden double frame 105 x 91 cm. The beautiful painting depicting the young and attractive Duchess Ortensia Mancini is part of the refined portraiture of Jacob Ferdinand Voet (Antwerp 1639 - Paris 1689). Of Flemish origin, the painter achieved great success with the aristocratic families of Rome - where he stayed from 1663 to 1679 - thanks to the famous series of portraits commissioned by Cardinal Flavio Chigi, depicting the most enchanting women of the time, and now housed in the Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia. The paintings became so popular that the artist was repeatedly asked to reproduce replicas and similar versions of them: the 'cabinet des dames' was thus one of the Roman fashions of the 17th century, justifying the large number of female portraits attributable to his workshop that gravitated on the market. Voet flaunted in his portraits a peculiar softness and grace in the rendering of the complexions, a subtle voluptuousness in the description of the lips, entrusted to small brushstrokes of red, a sense of calm fixity in the pose, all characteristics that are immediately reflected in the work under examination. Our young effigy, Hortense Mancini...

O/5300 - Oval antique portrait of a young famous maiden, but critics questioned are undecided : is she The Duchess of Polignac or Madame de Warens? On the back of the picture someone writed "Madame de Warens in 1729", but this portrait is very similar to that of Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron duchesse of Polignac, great friend and favorite of the queen Maria Antonietta...