Portrait of Margherita Gonzaga, Duchess of Ferrara (1564–1618), half-length,
oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm, framed

We are grateful to Paolo Bertelli for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

This elegant painting belongs to a group of portraits of the duchess, which all appear to have been painted by Jean (Giovanni) Bahuet, who worked as court painter in Mantua. Paolo Bertelli has observed that the present painting can be compared to the full-length portrait of Margherita that was sold in these rooms (Jean Bahuet, Portrait of Margherita Gonzaga, 21 April 2015, lot 6).

Establishing an accepted oeuvre of Bahuet is difficult as there is no known signed work by the artist. Valeria Pagani, Paolo Bertelli and Lisa Goldenberg-Stoppato have recently begun to reconstruct his production at various Northern Italian courts (see V. Pagani, Notes on a Flemish Portraitist at the Court of Vincenzo Gonzaga, in: The Burlington Magazine, vol. 129, no. 1007, February 1987, pp. 110–115).

Bahuet was Flemish and he is documented in Florence and Parma. He was connected with Jacopino de Conte until he settled in Mantua in 1579. Bahuet was on the ducal payroll after the accession of Vincenzo I and was already active at the Mantuan court under Vincenzo’s father. He received a monthly salary of 30 Lire and reimbursement for his materials, canvasses and pigments (see R. Piccinelli, The Position of Artists at the Gonzaga Court 1587-1707, in: The Court Artists in Seventeenth-Century Italy, ed. by E. Fumagalli/R. Morselli, Rome-Viella 2014, p. 175, note 31, 32;
for example, in 1589 Bahuet received 144 Lire and 3,5 Ducatoni for having painted five portraits).

The existence of several variants of the present portrait is plausible, as Bahuet produced a number of replicas after a successful composition for the intended use as a tool of dynastic propaganda. In 1596 a ‘sick painter’ – possibly Bahuet, who died in 1597 had to be replaced by an artist of inferior quality, ‘che non ha cosi buona mano’ (see V. Pagani, ibid., 1987, p. 113, note 29). Other artists occasionally worked for Vincenzo I prior to Pourbus’ arrival, but none of them had the role of court painter.

Margherita Gonzaga Este was the daughter of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, sister of Vincenzo I, and wife of Alfonso Il d’Este, the last Duke of Ferrara. After the death of her husband in 1597, she returned to Mantua under the name of Madama Serenissima di Ferrara and founded a convent in 1599. The sitter is shown in magnificent dress, covered in jewels. The numerous pearl necklaces, called ‘margaritae’ in Latin, could be a word-play on her name. Once widowed, Margherita bequeathed Cesare, Vincenzo’s nephew and heir, ‘omnes gemas, annulos, monilia, margaritas, et alia pretiosa’. As can be seen in a document from 1597, this included countless jewels and a triangle-shaped brooch with three pearl drops, which we can see on the right breast of the sitter. As Margherita appears to be between 20 and 25 in the present painting, it was probably executed between 1585–90.