Portrait of a Lady as Saint Mary Magdalene, oil on canvas, 103 x 72.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Dr. Andrea G. De Marchi for confirming the attribution of the present work.

Alessandro Varotari was the son of the painter and architect Dario Varotari (d. 1598) His earliest artistic training is unknown, although it has been stated that Padovanino studied by copying the Titian’s frescoes in the Scuola di San Antonio in his native Padua, the town from which he took his pseudoname. The influence of Titian remained fundamental to Padovanino’s art, as can be clearly seen in the present work.

Titian, more than any other painter, was responsible for the development of the art of portraiture in the first half of the 16th Century. Here Padovanino follows the change that had involved enlarging the field from the head-and-shoulders format that was normal in 15th-Century portraits to half-length and full-length figures, thereby permitting the inclusion of adjuncts, such as the urn in the present painting, to suggest the sitter’s interests or importance. Whereas most of the surviving portraits from the 15th Century are of men, from the first half of the 16th Century onwards the number of portraits of female sitters, such as the present painting, increased.