Portrait of a Woman with a Pearl Necklace

In 1883 the Museum of Fine Arts had been open for only seven years, in its first building on Copley Square. That year Mary Richardson, a Bostonian who also kept a house in Newport, first lent it this portrait. It became the museum's own only in 1925, when it arrived as her bequest.

Who the young woman is, nobody knows. The museum dates the panel loosely, probably between 1485 and 1495, when Lorenzo Costa was working in Bologna. She is shown at half length against a dark ground, her red-gold hair gathered under a pale cap, her bodice banded with gold embroidery and her sleeves a deep blue-green. Around her neck is the string of pearls that gives the picture its name, and below it a red jewel hangs on a thin cord.