Portrait of Ortensia de Bardi di Montauto, formerly identified as Giulia de' Medici

For a long time the woman in this 1559 portrait was called Giulia de' Medici, a granddaughter of a pope and, by most accounts, of part-African descent. That identification has since fallen away. Raffaello Borghini, writing in 1585, recorded that Allori painted the likeness of Lady Ortensia di Montauto, wife of Tommaso de' Bardi, while he was working in Rome, and scholars now match this canvas to that account. So the sitter is Ortensia de' Bardi di Montauto, a Florentine noblewoman, not a Medici at all. She sits in a carved and inlaid chair, richly but soberly dressed, the kind of likeness Allori turned out for the families around the grand-ducal court. The older, wrong name still trails the picture in its full title.