'Beatrice Cenci' (after Reni) (oil on canvas)

Oil painting on canvas, 'Beatrice Cenci' (after Reni), manner of Guido Reni, a so-called copy of possibly from a version in the Palazzo Colonna, Rome. The picture shows the bust of a woman in white with a white turban seen from behind but turning her head round and looking outwards. The original of this picture in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome is no longer thought to be Beatrice Cenci nor by Reni but was one of the most celebrated pictures of the 18th and 19th centuries. This was less because of its pictorial qualities than because it seemed the very emodiment of the innocent victimhood of its supposed subject, Beatrice Cenci (1577-1599) who was executed, along with her step-mother and one of her brothers, for murdering her father, to avenge his incestuous rape of her. Stourhead, Wiltshire (Accredited Museum)