Portrait of Agatha van Schoonhoven
38.3 x 27.1 cm; oil on wood panel (FC 216)
The panel is signed and dated 1529 and bears the name of the sitter. It is one of the best-known paintings by the great Dutchman, one of the first to make the great artistic journey to Rome. Under the protection of Pope Adrian VI, Jan van Scorel obtained a canonry in Utrecht, where he lived with the young woman in the portrait. It is a rare example of a portrait of an artist’s actual partner, long before the invented identifications of the Romantic Era. For this reason, along with the excellent quality of its execution, this piece has had widespread scholarly attention. The painting was stolen in 1965 by a thief disguised as a friar, who swapped it with a copy (now in the Criminology Museum, Rome) and facilitated its retrieval a short time later.
