Leonor de Toledo

In 1543 the Emperor Charles V handed back the fortresses of Florence and Livorno to Cosimo de' Medici, for a price. The Spanish garrisons walked out, and Cosimo was master of his own city for the first time. His route to that moment ran through the woman in this portrait. Eleonora was the daughter of Charles's viceroy in Naples, and marrying her in 1539 bought Florence a place inside the imperial system. Bronzino, the court painter, shows her in the Spanish-cut gown she had worn for her arrival in Florence, its seams sewn with pearls that double as the Medici balls. Between 1540 and 1543 she bore four children, and her hand rests on her bodice in a way the gallery reads as a hint at another pregnancy.