Portrait of a Woman

When the Uffizi drew up its inventory catalogue of 1890, this panel was entered as untraceable, and it is under that catalogue's number that it is registered today. The state record gives it no painter's name. It places the picture within the portrait practice of Bronzino, the Medici court painter who died in 1572, and dates it on style alone to the second half of the 16th century. The cataloguers add that it does not stand on its own. Portraits close to this one hang elsewhere in the Galleria Palatina and lie in the Soffittone, the attic store above the Pitti apartments.