School of Fontainebleau, 16th Century

The portrayal of Sabina Poppaea, Emperor Nero's second wife, was an extremely popular subject in French sixteenth-century art, giving rise to numerous copies and variants. Tacitus (Annales XIII) describes how the Empress Poppaea would partially veil her face in public, arousing the curiosity of onlookers. In Roman times, the transparent veil, or Roman gauze, was traditionally associated with courtesans rather than empresses. This aspect exemplifies the Fontainebleau School’s predilection for coquettish themes, often charged with ambiguous symbolism. These subjects, frequently drawn from history and mythology, provided a learned pretext for depicting overtly sexual and erotic images, like the female nude.

This painting is a version, with differences, of the composition painted by an unknown artist of the Fontainebleau School, circa 1550–70, now in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, in which the Empress stands before a cartouche bearing her name.¹ 

¹ S. Béguin, in L'Ecole de Fontainebleau, exh. cat., Paris 1972, pp. 213-4, no. 241, reproduced p. 216.