The Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai revealed an unprecedented discovery on Friday: a painting by Lavinia Fontana, one of the most significant artists of the Italian Renaissance.
The painting had been stored anonymously in the reserves of the museum, located in the northern French city of Douai.
Titled 'Portrait of a Gentleman, His Daughter, and a Servant,' this dark-hued oil-on-canvas depicts a bourgeois family.
In the painting, the father dressed in black with a voluminous pleated collar is seated in a chair, while his daughter, wearing a similar collar, offers him some flowers. In the background, a servant places a basket of fruit beside them.
In 2024, the Musée de la Chartreuse launched a programme to study and restore its collection of Italian paintings with the support of a committee of experts.
Previously attributed to Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Pourbus (1523-1584), the artwork has now been reassigned to Lavinia Fontana.
This nearly square canvas was bequeathed to the museum in 1857. Restoration is necessary before its integration into the permanent collection, the museum notes.
Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna in 1552 and died in Rome in 1614. She grew up in an intellectual environment and learned painting from her father, the Mannerist Prospero Fontana.
Renowned primarily for her portraits, she also created large altarpieces, devotional paintings, and rare mythological scenes.
She received commissions from Popes Gregory XIII and Clement VIII, and was the first female painter elected to the Academy of Saint Luke, the museum adds.
Lavinia Fontana was forty years junior to another great Renaissance figure, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-c. 1656), a rare female painter celebrated throughout Europe during her lifetime, and currently the subject of a retrospective at the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris.
