Portrait of a Lady in Red (Francesca Salviati?)

Two questions still hang over this small poplar panel. For a long time it was catalogued as a Pontormo, the leading portraitist of Florence in these years. Scholars now give it to his young pupil Agnolo Bronzino, working around 1533, near the start of the career that would make him portraitist to the Medici court. The sitter is the second puzzle. The Stadel labels her, with a question mark, as Francesca Salviati, a granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent whose sister was mother to Cosimo, soon to rule Florence as duke. The deep reds and whites of her gown echo the Salviati arms, and a ring on her finger recalls a Medici emblem, part of why her name became attached to the face. She married in 1533, the year the panel is usually dated. She sits turned slightly away, one forearm along the arm of her chair, a pose the museum credits with holding the viewer at a measured distance. The picture reached Frankfurt in 1882.