FG FINE ART LTD
Domenico di Bartolomeo Ubaldini, called
Domenico Puligo
Florence, 1492 -1527
This unpublished Cleopatra is a significant addition to Domenico Puligo’s oeuvre. Carlo Falciani was the first to correctly individuate the authorship of this painting with Puligo, placing the panel among the artist’s masterpieces, and it remains, to date, the painter’s most accomplished example of secular subjects.
Cleopatra
Oil on panel, 63 x 49 cm
PROVENANCE
Florence, Palazzo Corsini, prince Tommaso Corsini (1835 - 1919), as dowry to
Florence, Palazzo Pandolfini, countess Beatrice Corsini Pandolfini (1868 - 1955)
San Giuliano Terme, Pisa, marquise Paola Maria Pandolfini Poschi Meuron (1898 - 1989)
Private Collection
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. Fantozzi, Nuova guida ovvero Descrizione storico-artistico-critica della città e contorni di Firenze, Florence 1842, p. 552
H. C. Wilson, A New Guide of Florence and its Vicinity, Florence 1857, p. 136
Guida di Firenze e suoi contorni con vedute e pianta della città aggiuntavi la descrizione di Fiesole, Vallombrosa, Verna e Camaldoli, Florence 1860, p. 87
Nuova guida della citta’ di Firenze e suoi dintorni adorna di una nuovissima pianta della citta’ e di molte finissime incisioni in legno appositamente eseguite, Florence 1865, p. 125
U. Medici, Catalogo della Galleria dei principi Corsini in Firenze, Florence 1886, p. 105
In the biography of Puligo, as we will see later, Vasari mentions this composition saying that the artist created several paintings “where one sees the head of Cleopatra having her breast bitten by an asp”.
Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, whose beauty could subjugate any man, is here captured in the moment of ecstasy preceding the bite of the serpent, which she holds delicately in her right hand, and she does not turn toward the viewer, but her turned upwards gaze is already focused on her freedom and not being captured by Ottaviano, becoming a war trophy.
Woman, queen, and lover, she is depicted naked, already stripped of royal robes and jewels. The detailed accounts left by Cassius Dio and Plutarch allow us to reconstruct the last day of Cleopatra’s life. Free from pathetic or melodramatic tones, as the theme would dictate, Cleopatra offers the viewer the candour of her own pale flesh, which a soft light helps to highlight. Remarkable is the dynamic tone of the composition to which the slight torsion of the protagonist contributes.
A contemporary of Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, Puligo, probably entered the workshop of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio in the early sixteenth century, remaining there ‘for many years’ according to Vasari (1568). Ridolfo’s teachings steered his students toward a conservative leaning rooted in his illustrious family tradition, while simultaneously encouraging them to embrace the classicizing style of his contemporaries, inspired largely by Florentine Raphaelesque models and influenced by the School of San Marco. According to Vasari, Ridolfo was a master capable of stimulating his students, encouraging them to compare and emulate him, but also respecting their individual inclinations; he encouraged his students to specialize in specific genres and painting techniques: “...some to paint portraits from life, others to work in fresco, others in tempera, and to paint draperies expertly”. He was already a mature artist when he enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca in 1528.
A member of the Compagnia del Paiuolo, Puligo maintained close ties with Andrea del Sarto, whose influence is evident but personally reinterpreted in a poetic, introspective idiom characterised by psychological suspension and soft tonal fusion.
Puligo was praised by Vasari in the Lives for the quality of his draughtsmanship and for a ‘pleasing and gracious’ use of colour. Vasari further noted his predilection for a soft, understated handling of paint, avoiding chromatic excess or hardness of form, and achieving spatial recession through a gradual veiling of distance, as if enveloped in a light mist—an approach that lends his works both relief and refinement. Vasari, as mentioned, notes:
The same made many other pictures that are in the houses of citizens, and in particular some in which is to be seen the head of Cleopatra who is letting an asp bite her breast, and others in which there is Lucretia the Roman killing herself with a dagger.
While it is not currently possible to be certain that the work is the one cited by Vasari, we cannot exclude this possibility given the illustrious provenance of our Cleopatra. On the back of the painting is the sealing wax coat of arms of the Corsini princes, an ancient Florentine lineage with nine centuries of history, one of the most influential Italian noble families, known for their historical role in politics, finance, and the ecclesiastical spheres, including Pope Clement XII and Saint Andrew Corsini. Indeed, the Corsinis, after the Farnese in the 16th century, are among the few great papal families of the Italian aristocracy to boast two principal residences—in addition to numerous villas and farmhouses—in two different pre-unification capitals, Florence and Rome, with their respective substantial and distinguished art collections.
A label indicates the transfer of ownership from Tommaso Corsini (1835-1919), who married Anna Barberini Colonna, daughter of the prince Carlo Felice Barberini Colonna, to his daughter Beatrice. Beatrice Corsini (1868-1955) had married in Florence (1889) Count Roberto Pandolfini, a career military officer, later a Member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1904 to 1909. She probably came into possession, due to hereditary partitions, of many paintings from her father’s collection. The painting was in turn left as an inheritance to his daughter Paola Pandolfini (1898 - 1989) who married Poschi Meuron in 1919, as can be seen in the writing on the back.
Cleopatra, depicted half-length, naked, and with only the asp as attribute, is depicted against a neutral, dark background. She wears an elegant but yet simple hairstyle, with her blond, curly hair gathered at the nape of her neck and falling in locks to her shoulders.
The most immediate comparison is provided by a panel, almost certainly reduced along the sides, depicting a Female Figure, probably identifiable as Lucretia, preserved at the Arciconfraternita della Misericordia in Florence and generally dated to around 1525. In this work, the interpretation of the breast appears closely comparable, while the arrangement of the hair falling over the shoulders shows notable affinities with that of our painting and they are practically superimposable.
While some critics have tentatively identified the painting mentioned by Vasari with a Cleopatra in Budapest —which, unlike our panel, is partially covered by a light robe and depicted with her gaze lowered—the present rediscovery invites a reassessment of this hypothesis. The evident qualitative difference between the two works is particularly apparent in the handling of the paint: in our painting, fluid brushstrokes animate Cleopatra’s figure, lending her a sense of vitality and emotional engagement, expressed through the sinuosity of her movements and the flowing treatment of her hair, in marked contrast to the static rigidity of the Hungarian painting.
Some versions and workshop copies of the Budapest Cleopatra are known, such as the one in Palazzo Pitti or the one in Palazzo Bianco in Genoa. The rediscovery of our panel, of which no other versions have been identified to date, sheds new light on the production of Puligo, expanding the corpus of his known works and offering valuable evidence for reassessing his artistic development.
A full fact sheet is available on request.