Portrait of a Lady, perhaps Contessa Lucia Albani Avogadro ('La Dama in Rosso')

In 1563 a murder in Bergamo changed the life of the woman this portrait probably shows. Count Achille Brembati was killed inside the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the climax of a feud between his family and the Albani, and Giangirolamo Albani was banished. If the sitter is his daughter Lucia, as a record of 1715 already claimed, she and her husband Faustino Avogadro soon left Brescia for Ferrara, where he died the following year. The National Gallery dates the portrait to about 1556 to 1560, the calmer years just before. Moroni sets her rose silk against a grey wall and picks up its colour in the disks of pink Verona marble on the floor. Her fan is unusual, because its handle, normally the costliest part and a target of laws against luxury, is kept out of sight.