Portrait of a Noblewoman Dressed in Mourning

Jacopo da Empoli · c. 1600

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

221 × 122.5 cm (87 × 48 1/4 in.); Framed: 243.9 × 147.4 × 5.1 cm (96 × 58 × 2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

Rendered in deep blacks and pale flesh tones, this portrait carries the quiet gravity that defined Florentine aristocratic mourning — a cultural ritual as much as a personal one. Jacopo da Empoli worked in Florence at the turn of the seventeenth century, a period when painters were navigating between the artifice of Mannerism and a new, more restrained naturalism. He was known for his meticulous surfaces and cool precision, qualities that made him a trusted portraitist among the city's nobility. In this work, the sitter's mourning dress is painted with an almost textile-like attention to fabric and shadow, the severity of the black costume giving way to a dignified, composed presence rather than overt grief. Jacopo lived and worked in Florence for nearly his entire ninety-year life, outlasting most of his contemporaries and continuing to paint well into his eighties — a longevity reflected in the unhurried, assured quality of his best portraits. Our hand-painted oil reproduction follows the original's tonal restraint closely, preserving the subtle interplay of light across the sitter's face and the textural depth of her dress that makes the Art Institute's canvas so compelling in person.