Newly-attributed Lavinia Fontana portrait miniature returns to Strawberry Hill House

Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a noblewoman, c.1580-1590. Collection of Nick Cox/Period Portraits. Image courtesy of Strawberry Hill House.

An exquisite oil on copper miniature depicting a noblewoman in gold-embroidered finery against a blue background is currently on display at Strawberry Hill House.

Previously attributed to Bronzino, recent analysis has indicated that it may have been made in the final decades of the 1500s by Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614), the Bolognese painter widely considered Europe’s first professional woman artist, and acclaimed for her richly detailed portraits of noblewomen and religious scenes.

Research undertaken into 19th-century drawings in the V&A collection made a further connection between the miniature and the writer and collector Horace Walpole. Art historical notes made by Walpole show that he not only believed the portrait to be by Bronzino, but that he ascribed the sitter as Bianca Capello, the Grand Duchess consort of Tuscany and wife of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Bianca Capello (1548–1587) was one of Walpole’s great heroines, her adventurous life inspiring both his Gothic masterpiece novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) and his tragedy play The Mysterious Mother (1791). Perhaps most famously, Walpole’s fascination with her even led him to coin the term “serendipity” while researching her Venetian coat of arms.

The portrait miniature returns to Strawberry Hill for the first time since 1842 (being housed in private collection in the intervening years) and will be on display until 23 April 2025.

For information on visiting Strawberry Hill, visit the A Serendipitous Return: Lavinia Fontana’s lost Miniature webpage. A useful summary of the discovery and ongoing research into the miniature can be read in the Art Newspaper: Newly attributed Lavinia Fontana painting discovered at auction to go on display in London.