Lady Playing a Lute

Bartolomeo Veneto built his reputation on half-length likenesses of unidentified sitters, a staple of North Italian portraiture around 1500, and the lutenist in this panel is among his most admired inventions. The picture belongs to a group of closely related compositions in which the same figure appears with an instrument; several of them were reworked as devotional images of Saint Catherine, and the original of the group has never been securely identified. Nineteenth-century scholars ascribed the painting to Leonardo da Vinci, whose images of women it plainly echoes — a tribute to the finish and psychological poise of Bartolomeo’s best work. The panel, 55.9 × 41.3 cm, is held by the J. Paul Getty Museum.