Portrait of a Lady

This panel spent the 1940s on a list. Altobello Melone painted it in Cremona around 1512, and by the 19th century it belonged to the Trivulzio family in Milan. It then travelled: a collection in Glasgow, dealers in London and Berlin, back to Italy in 1927. During the Second World War it was taken out of the country for the museum Hitler planned to build at Linz in Austria, and it came back only in 1953, recovered by Rodolfo Siviero, the Italian official whose job for decades was tracking down works removed during the occupation. Brera has had it since 1989. Nobody knows who the sitter is. She was once called Paola Avogadro on thin evidence, and the museum now catalogues her simply as a lady, painted by a man from a city where Venetian colour, Ferrarese drawing and German prints all landed at once.