Portrait of Yolande of Anjou

The woman here, Yolande of Anjou, died in 1483, yet this portrait was painted around 1650, so no one who made it had ever seen her. She was a daughter of Rene of Anjou, the king of Naples who was also a poet, and she became duchess of Lorraine and Bar. The picture belongs to a vast Medici project known as the Gioviana series, a gallery of more than 500 portraits of famous men and women, real and legendary, that lined the corridors of the Uffizi. It grew from a collection assembled by the scholar Paolo Giovio, then copied and extended over many years. This face is one of the later additions, supplied around 1650 by an unknown painter for that wall of the celebrated.