Jewellery, Watches and Objects of Vertu

Three 18th/19th century framed wax profile portrait relief busts, in the manner of Samuel Percy, the first depicting an elegant 15th century Florentine lady, her hair fashionably arranged in ringlets, and wearing a string of pearls, the portrait mounted to an oval slate panel, signed ‘ANNA TORNABONI’, (sic) in gilt oval frame (damaged); the second depicting the Empress Josephine, her hair upswept and wearing a diadem, earring and necklace, signed ‘Josephine’ below, the image mounted on blackened glass, within wooden rectangular frame; the third a portrait of a medieval lady in red gown and black headdress, mounted in circular wooden frame, first length 14.5cm, second 15cm, third 13.5cm. £100-£150

The portrait of Anna Tornaboni (or Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni), depicts the young and beautiful wife of the 15th century wealthy Florentine banker Lorenzo Tornabuoni, cousin to the leading Medici ruler Lorenzo the Magnificent. The portrait image is after a series of bronze wedding portrait medallions made by the Renaissance Florentine artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, in honour of the couple’s marriage in June 1486. The marriage linked two of Florence’s oldest and most important families. Indeed, their marriage was one of the best documented of all those that took place in late 15th century Florence, being a lavish and splendid occasion, and was still being written about a century later. The brief marriage ended in tragedy with the young bride dying just two years later, in 1488, during the birth of her second son, at the age of just 20 years.


The bronze wedding medallions of Giovanna Tornabuoni are part of the permanent collection at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, together with a half length portrait of Giovanna, painted posthumously in 1489-90 by Ghirlandaio, the portrait commissioned by the grieving widdower Lorenzo Tornabuoni after his wife’s death and hung in his private rooms in the Tornabuoni Palace.