Portrait of Giulia Gonzaga

The painting in this black-and-white photograph has been missing since 1943. The Galleria Borghese had placed it on deposit at the small museum of Torre del Garigliano in Minturno, on the coast between Rome and Naples, not far from Fondi, where Giulia Gonzaga herself had once lived. In 1943 the war reached that stretch of coast, and the portrait was taken together with other property from the museum. It has never resurfaced, and the Borghese still lists it in its collection. The photograph shows her at half length, painted in oil on a slab of slate more than a metre tall. One hand rests at her breast, while the other cradles the jewelled head of a marten fur, a fashionable accessory of the day. The pose repeats an earlier portrait of her by the Venetian Sebastiano del Piombo.