Portrait of a Woman (Vannozza Cattanei?)

Vannozza Cattanei died in Rome in 1518. For years she had been the lover of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, the future Pope Alexander VI, and she was the mother of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. The Galleria Borghese dates this portrait to the 1520s, after her death, and keeps a question mark beside her name in the title. The art historian Claudio Strinati has suggested that Innocenzo da Imola may have based it on an older picture of the same woman. When the Borghese inventory of 1833 recorded the panel, it was listed as school of Garofalo, a painter from Ferrara. The scholar Adolfo Venturi gave it to Innocenzo in 1893. Today it is kept in storage. The sitter is shown half-length under a red curtain, with a long gold chain around her neck and a pair of gloves on the ledge in front of her.