AFTER RAFFAELLO SANZIO, CALLED RAPHAEL | PORTRAIT OF MADDALENA DONI

Probably, private collection, Milan, by the first half of the nineteenth century (according to a wax seal on the reverse);

Roy Neville, Pebble Beach, California, until recently.

This is an early 19th century copy after Raphael's Portrait of Maddalena Doni that hangs today in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.¹ The sitter, born Maddalena Strozzi (1489-1540), married Agnolo Doni (1474-1539), a prominent Florentine fabric merchant, in January 1504. Around this time, probably in celebration of their nuptials, Agnolo commissioned Raphael to paint pendant portraits of himself and his wife that originally hinged together to form a diptych. The closed diptych revealed monochrome illustrations of scenes from Ovid's Metamorphosis on the reverse of each panel, painted by an artist close to Raphael, known as the Master of Serumido, who drew inspiration from the Flemish tradition.  

Also to commemorate their marriage, the Donis commissioned Michelangelo to execute one of his extremely rare easel paintings, the so-called Doni Tondo, which hung in the couple’s bedchamber in their home on the Corso dei Tintorin in Florence. It was purchased by the Medici and moved to the grand ducal apartments in the Palazzo Pitti in 1594, ninety years after its execution by Michelangelo. It is now it the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, hanging alongside the aforementioned pair of portraits by Raphael.  

1. Inv. 1912 no. 59, oil on panel, 63.5 by 45 cm.  This portrait, along with the portrait of her husband, were moved from the Palazzo Pitti to a new display in the Uffizi Gallery in June 2018. 

 https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/portraits-doni-raffaello