Portrait of Eleonora de' Medici, Duchess of Mantua

In 1645 an agent named Paolo del Sera, buying in Venice for Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici, paid 60 scudi for what his note calls a portrait of a duchess by Pourbus. The duchess was a Medici herself. Eleonora de' Medici, born in Florence in 1567, married Vincenzo Gonzaga in 1584 and spent the rest of her life as Duchess of Mantua, running the duchy in person whenever her husband was away campaigning or taking a cure. The picture is in the Pitti inventories by 1687, and the name attached to it kept moving. It was given to Scipione Pulzone, then to Sustermans, and in the late 1920s somebody proposed it as an early Rubens, which the museum rejects on technical grounds. Pourbus has stood unchallenged since. The gallery still publishes no year for it, only the century, because he could have painted her at any point in his nine years at Mantua.