Portrait of a Woman

There is no document behind this portrait and no name attached to the hand that painted it. The museum dates it by the cut of the dress, which puts it in the last quarter of the 16th century, and goes no further on the painter than the Florentine school. What the canvas does carry is paperwork. A small paper label on the front holds an old exhibition number, 3155, and the inventory number is Poggio Imperiale 369. When the cataloguers looked for something to set beside it, the closest they could name was another gentlewoman of the same type, kept in the Soffittone, the attic floor above Palazzo Pitti where the palace has stored its furniture and its surplus paintings for centuries.