La Bella

In 1536 the Duke of Urbino wrote to his agent asking for the portrait of that woman in the blue dress. That letter is almost all we know for certain about who she is. Titian gives her a gown of deep blue velvet slashed to show the gold beneath, her hair dressed with care, a hand resting easily at her waist. People wanted her to be someone important, the duchess Eleonora Gonzaga, but that was ruled out, partly because a duke would hardly call his own wife that woman. Her real name is lost. What is striking is what happened next. A couple of years later the same model, the same face, turns up reclining nude in one of the most famous paintings in the world, Titian's Venus of Urbino. Here she stands clothed and composed, and no one can tell you her name.