Portrait of a Woman with a Book of Music

An unidentified woman sits with a book of music open before her, wearing an elegant, brilliantly coloured dress of the kind that was the height of Florentine fashion about 1540. The music book and the costly gown together declare her cultured, patrician background, and the picture is thought to have belonged to the Frescobaldi, one of the great Florentine banking families. Bachiacca (Francesco Ubertini) sets the sitter’s rose-pink gown against a green cloth and surrounds her with the intricate embroidery, fur-trimmed sleeves and patterned silks that show off his fluency in rendering texture; on the border of the tablecloth appear the birds for which, as Vasari reports, he was especially celebrated. The polished, sculptural treatment of the flesh belongs to the Florentine tradition of the early sixteenth century. The panel, 103.2 × 80.3 cm, is held by the J. Paul Getty Museum.