Portrait of Bianca Cappello

When this portrait was painted, around 1572, Bianca Cappello was both the talk and the scandal of Florence. A Venetian who had eloped as a teenager, she had become the mistress of Francesco de' Medici, heir to Tuscany, while both were married to other people. The city treated her as a foreign schemer. In 1578, once he was widowed, Francesco married her and made her Grand Duchess, which only sharpened the dislike. The picture comes from the workshop of Alessandro Allori, the Medici court painter, and shows her in the heavy jeweled dress of that rank. What sealed her legend was the ending. In October 1587 she and Francesco fell ill at the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano and died within a day of each other. Rumor blamed poison and pointed at Francesco's brother Ferdinando, a cardinal who then took the throne. Historians argued the case for four centuries. Recent study of the remains points instead to malaria.