Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni

Giovanna degli Albizzi married into the powerful Tornabuoni family of Florence in 1486, and two years later, on the 7th of October 1488, she died in childbirth at 19. Ghirlandaio painted this profile around then, and it is almost certainly a memorial, made for a husband who had just lost her. She stands in strict profile, the old formal pose for a woman of standing, her hair and jewels rendered with jeweller's care. Behind her, on a small cartellino, runs a line adapted from the Roman poet Martial: if only art could capture character and mind, there would be no lovelier picture on earth. It reads at once as praise of her and as the painter's quiet admission of what a portrait cannot hold. A coral rosary and a brooch rest on the shelf behind her, tokens of the household she left.