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| | Presented in the second of the six cabinets of the Italian schools are paintings by artists of the Roman, Venetian and Bolognese schools of the 16th and 17th centuries. Some of the works come from the collection of King William II of the Netherlands and were bought in The Hague in 1850. Flora by Francesco Melzi is a refined quotation from the work of Leonardo. When it came into the museum it was considered to be a work by the great master and was known as Columbine, the Favourite of Francis I. The attribution of many pictures in the Hermitage changed with time. The same thing happened with the Portrait of an Old Man by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio that was bought as a Raphael. William II's collection was also the source for a striking portrait of Cosimo I Medici, Duke of Tuscany that was probably the work of Angelo Bronzino. Lady at Her Toilet by Giulio Romano (now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) is reckoned to be a portrait of the beautiful Fornarina, beloved of Raphael, whom the great artist recorded in several of his own works. |
