Portrait of A Lady Known As Esmeralda Brandini - Provenance

Provenance

By the early 19th century (1805) the portrait was in the collection of comte James de Pourtalès Gorgier (1776–1855) in Paris. A catalogue of public sales printed in France in 1866 records the sale of the picture by the comte de Pourtalès Gorgier for 3,400 francs in 1865. Charles Augustus Howell bought it on behalf of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1867 at Christie's; Rossetti boasted that he had it for £20. It was bequeathed to the V&A with the collection of his patron Constantine Alexander Ionides, who had bought it from Rossetti for £315 in the 1880s.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti refers to the painting in his comments on his poem "For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli":

What masque of what old wind-withered New-Year
Honours this Lady?* Flora, wanton-eyed
For birth, and with all flowrets prankt and pied

with his reference: * The same Lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is evidently the subject of a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the Pourtales collection in Paris. This portrait is inscribed "Smeralda Bandinelli". Rossetti's suggestion that the portrait depicted the model Botticelli used for his Spring now seems unlikely.