Portrait of Lucrezia Ricasoli Zanchini

Around 1600 Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici finished a hunting villa on the hill at Artimino, west of Florence, and hung whole rooms of it with portraits of the women reckoned the greatest beauties of the courts of Florence, Rome and Naples. More than 60 were painted. This is one of them, and like the rest it carries the sitter's name in capitals straight across the front of the canvas, so a guest walking the room could read who he was looking at. Lucrezia Ricasoli, of the Zanchini family by marriage. The pictures were paid for in batches, 23 of them in 1601 and 21 more between 1603 and 1606, and they were turned out quickly by several hands working to one format. Which hand did which canvas has never been settled, and the names put forward include a painter from Ligozzi's workshop and one Matteo Confortini. Of the series, 44 survive, and they are kept today in the storerooms of the Uffizi.