Portrait of a Lady

Around 1550, when this was painted, Venetian women went to remarkable lengths to be blonde. The prized shade even had a name, biondo veneziano, Venetian blonde, and to reach it they would sit for hours on the open rooftop terraces of the city in a crownless wide-brimmed hat, the solana, that let the sun bleach the hair spread over the brim while shading the face. The fair-haired woman here has exactly that fashionable colour. We do not know who she was. Licinio gives her the sober dark dress and gold chain of a respectable wife rather than any story, and sets her against a plain neutral ground so nothing competes with the face. The picture reached the Accademia in 1850, left to the city by a Venetian noblewoman named Felicita Renier, and today it hangs in Room VII.