Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici in Hunting Dress

The Gallerie degli Uffizi will not put a single year on this portrait. Their catalogue sheet gives a broad bracket and then explains itself, saying the picture was probably painted in the first years Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici spent in Düsseldorf, where she had gone after marrying the Elector Palatine in 1691. The frame label is blunter about what she wears, abito da cacciatrice, a huntress's dress. What came afterwards is better known than the painting. Widowed in 1716, she returned to Florence, and in 1737, the last of the Medici, she signed the pact that tied the family's pictures, statues and books to the city and barred anyone from carrying them off. The canvas itself spent decades away on deposit at the Museo Mediceo in Palazzo Medici Riccardi and only came back to Pitti in 1972. The museum records a companion piece painted as its pendant, still in a German private collection.