Venetian School, first half of the 18th century

Possibly Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661–1747), Palazzo Loredan, Venice (according to an old annotated black and white photograph in the possession of the current owner);

In the collection of the present owner for over 30 years.

According to an old annotated black and white photograph in the possession of the present owner, this work may have once formed part of the collection of Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661–1747), one of the most active patrons of Venetian artists of the eighteenth century. Multiple inventories of the Count's property, the earliest dated 30 May 1738, record a portrait of a lady by Niccolò Cassana (1659–1714), with which this painting could tentatively be identified,¹ but the scarcity of additional information regarding the work and its provenance makes it difficult to be certain.

¹ For a transcription of Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg's inventories see A. Binion, La Galleria scomparsa del maresciallo von der Schulenburg, Milan 1990, pp. 133–295.