A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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758. PORTRAIT OF THE COUNTESS PALMA OF URBINO.

Piero della Francesca (Umbrian: 1416-1492). See 665.

Ascribed by Morelli to Paolo Uccello. "The treatment of the hair recalls that of one of the portraits in Paolo's battle-piece (583), while Piero used to represent curls in a thin and thread-like shape. The ornament on the left sleeve of the lady also reminds one of the decoration on the standard" (Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 17). "Of purely Florentine origin, and with its hardness of outline and modelling, and its severity of aspect, resembles a Pesellino writ large" (Claude Phillips in the Academy, Sept. 28, 1889).

This and the other profile head once ascribed to Piero (585) "are probably the earliest specimens we have in the National Gallery of pure portraits, i.e. pictures devoted simply to record the likeness of an individual, first introduced as donors into votive pictures, and next as actors in scenes from sacred history and legend. Portraits have at length made good their claim to a separate existence in pictorial art" (Monkhouse: The Italian Pre-Raphaelites, p. 41). To Piero della Francesca also we owe "most precious portraits (at Rimini and in the Uffizi) of two Italian princes, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and Federigo of Urbino, masterpieces of fidelity to nature and sound workmanship" (Symonds).