Provenance: Private collection, Pienza.

The painting, together with the previous lot, is accompanied by the expertise by Prof. Francesco Petrucci, December 2022 (an extract of which is reported below, which follows the previous one).
The second painting, which we define Portrait of a Lady in a Red Shawl, shows a more synthetic, essential and condensed execution, with broad and loose brushstrokes, presenting itself almost in a sketch or unfinished state. The hair, more collected and less fluffy, is free and natural, with locks of hair on the forehead, wavy and curled. The wide pleated brown dress is trimmed with a lace shirt, while a red shawl is gathered under her shoulders, held by her right hand.
The hairstyle and clothing justify an execution of the two paintings in the second half of the '70s of the seventeenth century, probably originally part of some dismembered "Galleria delle belle". The insertion of the figures in an oval frame is instead certainly later, perhaps from the early 18th century, according to a French-influenced fashion for collecting and displaying. Originally the two paintings must therefore have been rectangular in format, like the portraits in the gallery of the beauties of the Castello di Masino, executed in France around 1685-89 but then later reduced to an oval.