Portrait of Bice Sullam Pisa

The woman in the blue dress was born Bice Pisa, in Milan, in 1849, into one of the city's private banking families. Her father Luigi ran the bank, her cousin and husband Giuseppe Sullam helped manage it, and by the time this was painted, around 1870, she was carrying both names.

Giuseppe Bertini was the natural choice for the commission. He taught painting at the Brera academy from 1860, he had made stained glass for Milanese churches and for the Poldi Pezzoli house, and he would end up running the Poldi Pezzoli museum from 1881 and the Brera picture gallery from 1882. Painting the daughters of Milan's banking houses was part of the same world.

The dress is the reason the portrait travelled recently. It went to an exhibition about women and fashion in the later 19th century, where the fan of feathers, the rings and the necklaces read as evidence.