The portrait of Bianca Capello by Scipione Pulzone: a portrait makes a career

Abstract

Point of View # 12 focuses on 'Scipione Pulzone’s portrait of Bianca Capello', the wife of Francesco I de’ Medici. A native of Gaeta, the artist was one of the most sought-after portrait painters of his time; a number of letters document that he painted the celebrated Grand-Duchess of Tuscany between October 1585 and January 1586. Sources also record that he used the extremely expensive pigment Ultramarine in this portrait – something confirmed by our recent scientific analyses of the picture. The brilliant painting now in Vienna is therefore the portrait the sitter presented to a friend, the Venetian nobleman Francesco Bembo, who proudly displayed it in his hometown. In 2012 the Picture Gallery started a new series of exhibitions called „Points of View“; each focuses on an exceptional painting from our collection that is either rarely shown for lack of wall space, or one where recent research offers new insights. Exhibition: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria (16.04-26.07.2015).