Portrait of Francesca Gommi, Wife of Carlo Maratti (c. 1670–89): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Francesca Gommi, Wife of Carlo Maratti (c. 1670–89) 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:

This portrait drawing by Carlo Maratti conveys the immediacy of being drawn while the artist looked directly at the sitter’s features. The sitter, Francesca Gommi, was Maratti’s mistress (later wife), who he also depicted in a formal portrait, now in the CMA’s collection (see 2018.1). This drawing, instead, depicts an intimate moment. Adding to the casual nature of the portrait, Gommi wears a whimsical rimless hat, which may be a sleeping cap.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Francesca Gommi, Wife of Carlo Maratti
• Date: c. 1670–89
• Creator attribution: Carlo Maratti (Italian, 1625–1713)
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: red chalk on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 38.7 x 25.7 cm (15 1/4 x 10 1/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2019.74

A detail from the museum

The sitter of this portrait was the mistress of the artist and later his wife.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Brown, Heather Lemonedes. “Acquisitions 2019.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 6-7.
• Rudolph, Stella, Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, and Carlo Maratti. Carlo Maratti (1625-1713) : Tra La Magnificenza Del Barocco E Il Sogno d’Arcadia : Dipinti E Disegni. Roma: Ugo Bozzi Editore -- Edizioni per la Storia dell’Arte, 2024.

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.