Portrait d'une dame

In 1460s Florence a well-born woman was usually painted like this, in strict profile against a flat blue ground, more a display of family standing than a private likeness. Her yellow sleeve carries an embroidered badge of three palm fronds and a feather, almost certainly a heraldic device, probably her husband's or her family's, though no one has ever identified her from it. When the National Gallery bought the picture in 1866 it was sold as a Piero della Francesca; only in 1911 did the critic Roger Fry recognise the hand of Alesso Baldovinetti, a Florentine known as much for mosaic and fresco as for panels. The pearls at her hair and throat were the standard shorthand of the time for purity, part of the message a marriage portrait was built to send.