Skip to main content

Lady in a Fur Wrap - The Mystery Lingers

One of art’s great mysteries is on the way to being solved following the initial finding of a four-year research project focusing on one of Glasgow Museums’ most famous paintings. Lady in a Fur Wrap is renowned as one of the finest portraits to be produced in Europe during the late 16th century, but remains unsigned. Up until now the painting of a young woman gazing at the viewer while wrapped in a fur robe, which has hung in Pollok House in Glasgow since 1967, has been attributed to Spanish Renaissance master, El Greco (1514-1561). After more than 100 years of debate, however, historians and scientists have applied state-of-art techniques to declare the painting to be the work of another Spanish artist, Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531-1588).

This conclusion is the result of extensive scientific detective work carried out by experts at the Museo del Prado, Madrid, and later at the University of Glasgow in partnership with Glasgow Museums. Investigations began while the painting was on loan to the Prado in Madrid in 2014 to mark the fourth centenary of El Greco’s death, with tests also carried out on works by El Greco and others, including Sánchez Coello. An extensive research project in Glasgow looked forensically at technique, style and social mores of the painting’s era, including dress.

Lady in a Fur Wrap has a colourful history. The painting was bequeathed to the city of Glasgow in 1967 by Dame Anne Maxwell Macdonald, grand-daughter of its owner, Sir William Maxwell, who purchased it in 1853 after it previously hung in the Louvre as part of the Spanish collection of King Louis Philippe of France. As El Greco’s international reputation was cemented on the back of Lady in a Fur Wrap, more sceptical scholars have always questioned the veracity of his involvement in its creation. Other suspects in the frame included Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625), though all evidence eventually pointed to Sánchez Coello.

As Dr Hilary Macartney, who led the research at the University of Glasgow, points out, “In his time, Sánchez Coello was better known and more admired than El Greco. The misattribution of the Lady was instrumental in establishing El Greco’s reputation outside Spain in the 19th century. More recently, the portrait’s popular association with Sofonisba Anguissola helped revive interest in her work. Now, at last, it will re-establish the international reputation that Alonso Sánchez Coello deserves.”

Despite this, with preparations underway to return Lady in a Fur Wrap to Pollok House in 2020, the painting retains an air of intrigue worthy of historical fiction. As Duncan Dornan, head of Glasgow Museums, points out, while what can now be regarded as Sánchez Coello’s painting remains a fascinating portrait, “although we now understand who painted the work, the identity of the mysterious lady is still unanswered. It is certain the Lady in a Fur Wrap will continue to intrigue and inspire for generations to come.”

Scottish Art News, November 18th 2019


ends

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more