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Point of view #12

Point of view #12

Scipione Pulzone's Portrait of Bianca Cappello. A Portrait Makes a Career

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.


Information

16 April 2015
to 26 July 2015

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