Lucrezia Sommaria

Ridolfo Ghirlandaio

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the waist up, a pale-skinned young woman with tawny-brown hair wears a sapphire-blue gown in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled slightly to our right, and she turns her head back to our left to gaze down in that direction with dark blue eyes under thin brows. A delicate wash of petal pink tinges her cheeks on either side of a slender nose over small, pale rose lips, which are closed. Shadows mark the hollows of the temples in her high forehead, the hollows of her high cheeks within her broad face, and the corners of her eyes. Her hair is coiled and wound round with a blue ribbon, which together cross over the top of her head. Her gown has voluminous, puffy sleeves and a low, squared neckline edged with black. The vertically pleated white chemise under her gown covers her chest, and a white cuff peeks out from the sleeve we see. That arm, on our left, rests in front of her on a slate-blue ledge. She holds a tightly folded piece of flax-brown fabric clutched in that hand. Black letters on the face of the ledge read, “LVCRETIAE.SVMARIAE.EFFIGIES.”