Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici

In 1690 Antonio Franchi painted the only daughter of the grand duke of Tuscany, and within a year she was gone. Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici is about 23 here, on the eve of a marriage arranged to carry her north as the wife of Johann Wilhelm, the Elector Palatine, at his court in Düsseldorf. So this is Florence's last Medici daughter while the city still had her, dressed for a court she was about to leave. What no one in the room could have guessed is how her story turns. She came back a widow, and in 1737, the last of her line, she signed the pact that handed the entire Medici collection to Tuscany on a single condition, that nothing ever leave Florence. Many of the paintings near this one in the Palazzo Pitti are still here because of her.