Portrait of a Lady

The cloth in her hand carries a Latin warning, sunt laquei Veneris, cave. These are the snares of Venus, beware. Nobody knows who she was. Two names have been put forward, Giulia Gonzaga, Countess of Fondi, a famous beauty of her day, and Tullia d'Aragona, a Roman courtesan who also published poetry, and neither comes with any evidence.

The rest of the picture is about wealth. She wears a gold gown with slashed sleeves that let the white shirt show through, a pink cloak lined with fur, and a band of pearls and jewels over her braided fair hair, with a gold veil falling to her shoulders. The National Gallery reads that headdress as the fashion of the 1540s, which makes this one of only two portraits Sebastiano painted in the last seven years of his life.

For a long time it hung at Longford Castle in Wiltshire, in the Green Drawing Room, beside Holbein's portrait of Erasmus, and it comes to the National Gallery on loan from that collection.