Portrait of an Old Woman

Follow this canvas through the Pitti paperwork and it changes hands every time somebody picks up a pen. The inventory of 1781 has it as a Giovan Battista Zelotti. The inventory of 1809 makes it a Francesco Bassano. For much of the 20th century it was a Titian, and it still carries a number in the standard Titian catalogue. The name it has now, the Veronese portraitist Orlando Flacco, was suggested out loud by the art historian Federico Zeri, and became easier to accept once a restoration took off the dirt and old varnish and let the original paint be seen. The photo archive founded on Zeri's own material has not followed him: it files the picture as an anonymous Venetian. She is half-length in a plain cap, turned slightly away, a book in her hands, in the Sala di Saturno.