A Personification of Fame
| Support Type: | Canvas |
| Paint Type: | Oil Paint |
| Current Location: | Currently held at the National Gallery, London (Room 32), inventory number NG6321 |
| Location History: | The painting's early ownership is undocumented — it's unknown who originally commissioned it. It's believed to have later belonged to Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, the last Duke of Mantua, before entering the notable collection assembled by Girolamo Manfrin in Venice, where it's recorded alongside other works that likewise now hang in the National Gallery. It subsequently passed into the National Gallery's own collection, where it remains today. |
Here, a single reclining figure dominates the canvas, facing the viewer almost casually, rather than ceremoniously. Strozzi dresses her in a bold saffron yellow skirt and crimson bodice, which matches the two trumpets that she holds; one of metal, the other of light wood. The centre of the picture is the puzzle of doubling; allegorical figures are typically represented carrying a single horn or two trumpets of different length, to blow out good fame against ill. Strozzi breaks with that tradition, combining a golden trumpet with a wooden shawm, which is more related to court music than classical allegory, and leaves the precise symbolic implications of the pairing open. The setting is sparsely filled; there are only a few rocks and small plants drawn into the dark, so that everything else is focused on the figure and the loose brushwork in the folds of her shirt and skirt, which is an expression of the loose and confident brushwork of all the lines. The looseness is typical of the artist in his late years, who, after decades of painting in Genoa, moved to Venice: his palette had become more enriched, his execution more spontaneous, closer to the colouristic freedom of Venetian art than to the more constrained style of his earlier years in Genoa. The low position in the picture and the unusually wide and elongated format indicate that the work is likely an overdoor or painted panel, which would have been intended to be viewed upwards and not face-to-face with the viewer, and also a doorway or passage. This is not a formula but a one-off experiment in a treatment of this subject that is not known to survive except for this canvas by Strozzi.
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