Portrait of a Lady

This portrait of about 1555 shows an elegant Florentine lady in the cool, refined court style of the mid-sixteenth century. Francesco Salviati, painter, draughtsman and man of letters, was among the founders of Mannerism, and in this half-length likeness he combines silken costume, restrained ornament and a composed, slightly self-aware expression in the polished manner he perfected as a portraitist of the Roman and Florentine elite. The picture is one of the most beautiful portraits in the National Gallery of Art from the generation between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.