Ginevra Cantofoli (Bologna 1618 - 1672)
Woman wearing a turban (supposed portrait of Beatrice Cenci)

In 1777 Goethe confided to his friend G. Zimmermann that “In this face there is more than I have ever seen in any other human face.” The face Goethe was talking about was that of Beatrice Cenci, the ill-fated Roman noblewoman put to death in 1599 in Rome for killing her father. According to a tradition consolidated in the 18th century, her portrait is said to have been painted by Guido Reni on the eve of her execution.

Before becoming part of the Barberini collection in 1818, the painting belonged to the Colonna collection, appearing in its inventories starting in 1783. However, even earlier, it must have been popularised through a series of copies, mainly those by Friedrich G. Naumann. Naturally, the fame of this portrait was not determined by the fact that the girl resembled an angel; and if Lavater could write in his Physiognomische Fragmente (1778) that the young woman looked “incapable of any sort of malevolent design” it was because he had in mind the tragic story that was once again popular thanks to Lodovico Antonio Muratori’s Annals of Italy (1749), presenting Beatrice as the victim of her father’s “unruly cravings” and the merciless inflexibility of the Pope. This helped fuel the lively imagination of the Romantics; and in the 19th century this unfortunate heroine was celebrated in the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Dickens, Stendhal and Shelley. As a consequence, Cenci’s portrait became a true object of cult and pilgrimage, right up to the story’s more recent interpretations by Artaud and Moravia.

Actually, there has been considerable doubt surrounding the subject of the piece and its author: mainly, whether it was plausible for a girl sentenced to death under those circumstances to have her portrait painted. Today, the piece’s attribution to Reni has been almost unanimously refuted; and according to the most recent hypothesis, the anonymous portrait, perhaps in the guise of a sibyl, may be ascribed to Bolognese painter Ginevra Cantofoli.

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