DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68073#0126
100
OLD WORLD MASTERS
The lady is dressed in dark-blue velvet with a curious collar of white
lawn and grey fur with another collar at its base of spangled embroidery
and around the waist a narrow girdle to match. The dress is pro-
fusely decorated with gold filigree beads.
Gold pins are placed in her blonde hair, over which is a headdress
of curiously puffed and twisted material decorated by blue and gold
sequins.
The background is black.
This portrait, painted in tempera on a panel (20^ x 14^), was pur-
chased by M. Veil-Picard of Paris at the Villeroy Sale in Paris in 1922.
Adolfo Venturi writes in L’Arte (April, 1925): “The Mackay portrait
cut off below the waist, rises in the canvas with Gothic grace. Pic-
turesqueness is the keynote. The relief, even in its slightest parts,
has an ideal softness of planes. But in this picture Pisanello’s genius
has attained its maximum of expression. Everything shows an ad-
vance on tire Louvre picture—the eye sunk deep in its socket; the
eyebrow like the valve of a shell molded over the round, while in the
Louvre picture it is a mere silken strip; the ear, no longer a mere piece
of cartilage, is downy velvet; above all, the superb decorative effect
of the oval face between the strange volutes of the turban and the
chains of perforated gold beads.
“In the other portraits the decorative effect is helped by the fan-
tastic blossoms standing out against the dark background of the
hedge, making a greater contrast with the background than with the
face. In the Mackay portrait the background is equally dark through-
out. The interest of the face itself is accentuated by the myriad gold
lights in the gilded trefoils on the dress and in the golden beads of the
chains (light as balls of silk) and in the nebulous phosphorescence of
the little balls which adorn the neck of the dress and the dark enamel
of the ivy on the turban of Oriental splendor. The effect, carefully
prepared to isolate the face from the surrounding shadow, acquires
an intensity of refinement. The contrast between the dark back-
ground and the phosphorescent dress is repeated in that between the
dark blue material of the dress and in the high lights of this; the icy
brilliance of the collar cuts into the softness of the fur with unexpected
OLD WORLD MASTERS
The lady is dressed in dark-blue velvet with a curious collar of white
lawn and grey fur with another collar at its base of spangled embroidery
and around the waist a narrow girdle to match. The dress is pro-
fusely decorated with gold filigree beads.
Gold pins are placed in her blonde hair, over which is a headdress
of curiously puffed and twisted material decorated by blue and gold
sequins.
The background is black.
This portrait, painted in tempera on a panel (20^ x 14^), was pur-
chased by M. Veil-Picard of Paris at the Villeroy Sale in Paris in 1922.
Adolfo Venturi writes in L’Arte (April, 1925): “The Mackay portrait
cut off below the waist, rises in the canvas with Gothic grace. Pic-
turesqueness is the keynote. The relief, even in its slightest parts,
has an ideal softness of planes. But in this picture Pisanello’s genius
has attained its maximum of expression. Everything shows an ad-
vance on tire Louvre picture—the eye sunk deep in its socket; the
eyebrow like the valve of a shell molded over the round, while in the
Louvre picture it is a mere silken strip; the ear, no longer a mere piece
of cartilage, is downy velvet; above all, the superb decorative effect
of the oval face between the strange volutes of the turban and the
chains of perforated gold beads.
“In the other portraits the decorative effect is helped by the fan-
tastic blossoms standing out against the dark background of the
hedge, making a greater contrast with the background than with the
face. In the Mackay portrait the background is equally dark through-
out. The interest of the face itself is accentuated by the myriad gold
lights in the gilded trefoils on the dress and in the golden beads of the
chains (light as balls of silk) and in the nebulous phosphorescence of
the little balls which adorn the neck of the dress and the dark enamel
of the ivy on the turban of Oriental splendor. The effect, carefully
prepared to isolate the face from the surrounding shadow, acquires
an intensity of refinement. The contrast between the dark back-
ground and the phosphorescent dress is repeated in that between the
dark blue material of the dress and in the high lights of this; the icy
brilliance of the collar cuts into the softness of the fur with unexpected