Italian, Milanese, 'Bona of Savoy (?)', about 1475-1500

In this almost life-sized portrait, an elegantly dressed lady holds a bunch of columbines. She is shown in profile, as was conventional for formal aristocratic portraits – like Giovanni da Oriolo’s Leonello d‘Este – and her fantastically rich outfit proclaims her status.

It’s an unusual work: it’s painted on canvas rather than wooden boards, the usual support for Renaissance paintings. It’s also very worn – in places the paint has almost completely disappeared, and the material underneath is showing through – making it very difficult to identify either sitter or artist. The flowers might be a reference to the lady’s name, although columbines could also symbolise faithfulness.

The extraordinary opulence of this lady’s dress is typical of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century aristocratic fashion. The dress is red velvet or silk brocade with a full skirt and a low cut, tightly laced bodice. The sleeves are made of strips of different coloured fabric, tied on to the bodice with bows at shoulders and elbows. There, and down the back of the sleeve, giant puffs of the lady’s linen underdress escape between the ribbons. Look closely and you can see the linen itself has been delicately embroidered. A later version of this style can be seen in Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Woman inspired by Lucretia, painted in the 1530s.

She wears several necklaces, the pink beads probably being meant as coral, with what might be pearls in her hair. Her long blonde hair hangs in a laced plait down her back. A delicate band around her forehead secures an embroidered cap on the back of her head. This hairstyle seems to have been introduced to the northern Italian courts by Aragonese brides from Naples and was especially popular in the 1490s, as were the ribboned sleeves slashed down the back. They are worn by Beatrice d’Este in the Pala Sforzesca (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) and by the lady in Leonardo da Vinci’s La belle ferronnière (Louvre, Paris).

We don‘t know who the sitter is. She been previously identified as Beatrice d’Este and Bona of Savoy, both wives of the Sforza Dukes of Milan, but bears little resemblance to either. Portraiture played an important role at the Renaissance courts, and rulers employed professional portrait painters to paint themselves, their family and their visitors. They collected portraits of family and friends, and portraits were sent as gifts, often to prospective husbands to give them an idea of what to expect, as in Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan. Perhaps this painting was done on canvas to make it easier to transport.

The style of the portrait, with its pale-skinned, serious sitter shown in profile against a dark background, is similar to that of Ambrogio de Predis’s Portrait of a Woman in Profile. He collaborated with Leonardo and worked as court painter for the Sforzas in the 1490s, but condition of this picture’s paint surface makes it very difficult to attribute it to him or to any other artist.