Queen Caterina Cornaro

by Giorgione [Giorgio Barbarella]


Queen Caterina Cornaro (B-31) is authoritatively reported to have commissioned Giorgione to paint a portrait, now lost, of herself on horseback at a hunt. The Florentine artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari stated, 1568, that the portrait was then in the collection of her relative Giorgio Cornaro.

Less credibly, a half-length portrait of the Queen that was formerly in the collection of Sir Herbert Cook of Richmond, England, is also sometimes attributed to Giorgione. [Note: Sir Herbert was the heir of Sir Francis Cook, 1st Bart. (died 1901), of Doughty House, Surrey, whose collection included The Continence of Scipio, a Giovanni Bellini painting commissioned by Cav. Proc (later Cardinal) Francesco Cornaro (B-60), c. 1506.]


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