Portrait Of A Lady With Ferronnière And Blue Dress. Austrian Or North Italian School, Ca. 1830

Portrait of a Lady with Ferronnière and Blue Dress. Austrian or North Italian School, ca. 1830

Portrait from about 1825-1835.

Oil on a rectangular wooden panel with an oval image.

Dimensions with wooden mat: 30 x 35.5 cm.

Dimensions of the panel alone: 32 x 25 cm.

On the reverse there is a long pencil inscription, together with an older and less visible note in ink. The main inscription identifies the young woman as Countess Nina Mitrowsky, wife of Count Faussone di Germagnano and mother of Natalia Giriodi di Monastero. This immediately places the work in a precise aristocratic setting, between Piedmont and the Habsburg world.

The portrait itself points in the same direction. The high curls, the ferronnière resting on the forehead, the cloudy sky in the background, the fresh range of blues, and the emphasis given to the clear eyes all belong to that elegant and slightly codified formula of Central European female portraiture in the 1820s and 1830s. The painting therefore has a distinctly Austrian flavour, or at least that of the Italian territories then strongly marked by the visual culture of the Empire. The comparison with Friedrich Johann Gottlieb Lieder helps to place this atmosphere, without implying a direct attribution.

The historical interest of the painting is increased by the genealogical tradition connected with the name Mitrowsky. One available line of research gives Marianna Mitrowski a father named Antonio Ferdinando, a name compatible with Anton Ferdinand von Mittrowsky, a high-ranking officer in the Habsburg army, active in the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, also present in the Italian theatre before dying in Vienna in 1809. Without turning this into an absolute certainty, the convergence helps to clarify the cultural background of the portrait.

Although the young woman later entered the Piedmontese nobility through marriage, the image still retains much of her original milieu. The rectangular wooden panel, with the oval painted field set at its centre, perfectly suits the private, intimate, and family character of the work.

Small scattered paint losses. The image remains clearly legible.