Portrait of Franca Viviani della Robbia

Painted in 1923 and held at the Galleria d'arte moderna in Florence, this portrait depicts Franca Viviani della Robbia, a member of an old Florentine family. The della Robbia name connects the sitter to one of the great dynasties of Renaissance artistic production — the sculptors Luca, Andrea, and Giovanni della Robbia — though by the twentieth century such surnames designated aristocratic heritage rather than active artistic involvement. Corcos painted this portrait at sixty-seven years of age, in the aftermath of the First World War and in a changed social climate where his particular niche — elegant women in formal society settings — retained its market but had lost some of its cultural centrality to the modernist movement. The Florence gallery's acquisition situates the work within the civic collecting tradition that preserved this kind of figurative painting through the upheavals of the avant-garde.

By 1923 Corcos's technique was fully settled into the late academic manner he had maintained across decades — smooth facial modelling, controlled palette, elegant compositional organization. Compared to his works of the 1890s there may be a slightly more relaxed quality in the execution, but his essential approach to rendering feminine presence remained consistent and authoritative.