Portrait of a Young Woman

For a long stretch of the 19th century this was a portrait of Bianca Cappello, the Venetian who became Grand Duchess of Tuscany and died in October 1587, a day after her husband Francesco de' Medici. The Poggio Imperiale inventory of 1860 entered it under her name. Later the identification moved one generation down, to Pellegrina Bonaventuri, Bianca's daughter by her first marriage, married to Ulisse Bentivoglio in 1577 when she was 13. The museum rejects that as well, on the plain ground that the face does not match the family likenesses of Bianca. What the record will commit to is a Venetian hand and a date in the 1590s. The canvas is 64 centimetres by 50 and is kept in the gallery's stores, carrying its old Poggio Imperiale number, 790, renumbered at some point from 893.