Portrait of a Courtesan (also known as Portrait of Fillide) was a painting by the Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Painted between 1597 and 1599, it was destroyed in Berlin in 1945 and is known only from photographs. It has been suggested that the portrait represents the goddess Flora who was herself a courtesan.
Earlier scholars identified the flower she presses to her breast as orange blossom or bergamot, symbol of marriage and...
more
Portrait of a Courtesan (also known as Portrait of Fillide) was a painting by the Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Painted between 1597 and 1599, it was destroyed in Berlin in 1945 and is known only from photographs. It has been suggested that the portrait represents the goddess Flora who was herself a courtesan.
Earlier scholars identified the flower she presses to her breast as orange blossom or bergamot, symbol of marriage and fidelity, and claimed the subject as Caterina Campi, wife of Caravaggio's friend Onorio Longhi. Caravaggio scholar John Gash, however, identifies the flowers as "definitely jasmine", symbol of erotic love, and therefore more suitable to a courtesan than to a respectable married woman. The portrait belonged to Caravaggio's patron, Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, and the 1638 inventory of the Giustiniani collection lists a "portrait of a courtesan named Fillide", identified by modern scholars as Fillide Melandroni.
Fillide figured prominently in...
less
