La velata

Raphael painted this portrait in Rome around 1516, when he was the most sought-after artist in the city, running a large workshop and working for the Pope. Against all that, this is quiet and personal. A young woman turns towards us in a shimmering white silk sleeve, a veil over her hair, one hand resting on her chest. Nobody knows for certain who she is. For centuries people have believed she was Margherita Luti, the daughter of a baker in Rome, said to be the woman Raphael loved. The same face seems to appear in another of his paintings, La Fornarina, where she is shown half nude, which is part of why the two have been tied together. The link rests largely on a story told by the writer Giorgio Vasari a generation later, that Raphael painted a beautiful portrait of a woman he loved. It hangs today in the Palatine Gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence.