Ritratto di giovane donna detta «La Bella»

She turns to meet your eye in a red mantle, a jewel case held in one hand, her features cool and composed. We don't know who she was. In Venice around 1520 there was a lively taste for pictures like this, half-length portraits of beautiful young women, often not real sitters at all but ideals of the fashionable Venetian beauty, and sometimes thought to show the city's celebrated courtesans. Palma Vecchio made a specialty of them, all fair skin, loosened hair, and rich cloth. For a long time this one was even believed to be by Titian, the bigger name, before scholars gave it back to Palma. It later passed through the Rothschild family for generations before reaching the collection that hangs it today in Madrid.