Portrait of a Couple (c. 1580–88): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Couple (c. 1580–88) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

While the attribution remains hotly debated, this work exemplifies how Italian portraiture of the 1500s could articulate family alliances through marriage. The inscription gives the sitters’ ages as 35 and 28, and their elaborate jewelry, weapons, and garments, made of expensive materials, convey their elite status. The marten skin attached to the woman’s waist-its head decorated with gems-symbolized propriety. These expressions of wealth convey achievements and position rather than accurate personalities, and the figures, though lifelike, stand in awkward relationship to each other, their interaction one of alliance not love.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Couple
• Date: c. 1580–88
• Culture: Northern Italy, late 16th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 132 x 173 x 10.5 cm (51 15/16 x 68 1/8 x 4 1/8 in.); Unframed: 99.8 x 140.5 cm (39 5/16 x 55 5/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.793

A detail from the museum

The bejeweled martin (weasel) was a coveted fashion accessory in Renaissance Europe.

Collection credit

Holden Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Rubinstein-Bloch, Stella. Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings, Etc. Presented by Mrs. Liberty E. Holden to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1917.
• G. U. "The Holden Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 4, no. 2 (1917): 19-34.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.