Quintilia Fischieri

Federico Barocci of Urbino was the most admired Italian painter of the generation between Raphael and the Carracci, and among the most influential: his soft modelling, pastel harmonies and delicate treatment of light passed into the work of Rubens and of the Baroque painters who came after him. He worked slowly, rarely left Urbino, and was occupied chiefly with altarpieces and devotional pictures for the churches and confraternities of central Italy, so that his portraits, made for the court and the local nobility, are among the rarest part of a small surviving output; this likeness of Quintilia Fischieri belongs to that late group. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and came to the museum with the Samuel H. Kress Collection.