Porträt der Beatrice Cenci

For centuries visitors to Rome were told a stirring story about this picture. The girl in the turban was said to be Beatrice Cenci, a young noblewoman beheaded in 1599 for plotting the death of her abusive father, and the painter was said to be Guido Reni, who supposedly caught her likeness in prison on the eve of her execution. It made her the tender face of a Roman tragedy, and the image drew visitors for generations. The trouble is the dates. The painting is now given to Ginevra Cantofoli and placed around 1650, some 50 years after Beatrice went to the scaffold, so no one working on it could have seen her. Cantofoli trained in Bologna in the workshop of another woman painter, Elisabetta Sirani.