Portrait of Francesca Gommi Maratti (c. 1701): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Francesca Gommi Maratti (c. 1701) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Carlo Maratti (Italian, 1625–1713).

The work and its context

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

In 1700 Carlo Maratti’s wife died, permitting him to marry his longtime mistress, Francesca Gommi, who began modeling for the artist in the 1670s and was the mother of his only child, Faustina. This painting was presumably painted shortly after the marriage as an homage from the artist to his new wife. To introduce an allegorical element into the composition, Maratti included a painting within a painting—in this case a drawing depicting Venus forging the love-darts of her adolescent son Cupid, suggesting that love will conquer all.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Francesca Gommi Maratti
• Date: c. 1701
• Creator attribution: Carlo Maratti (Italian, 1625–1713)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Overall: 98.5 x 74.5 cm (38 3/4 x 29 5/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2018.1

A detail from the museum

The sitter holds a drawing representing Venus making Cupid's weapons, symbolizing the power of love to conquer all.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Caversazzi, Ciro. Il Ritratto italiano dal Caravaggio al Tiepolo. Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1927.
• Bershad, David L. “The Newly Discovered Testament and Inventories of Carlo Maratti and his Wife Francesca (Gommi).” Antologia di Belle Arti 25–26 (1985): 65–84.
• Natoli, Marina and Francesco Petrucci. Donne di Roma: dall'Impero Romano al 1860: Ritrattistica Romana al Femminile. Roma: De Luca Editori d'Arte, 2003.

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.