Raffaello’s “Portrait of a Young Woman” better known as “La Fornarina” or the baker woman, has returned home to Rome’s Palazzo Barberini National Art Gallery after featuring highly in a delayed landmark show at London’s National Gallery devoted to the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance master’s death on Good Friday 1520.
The British gallery had loaned in its place “The Lady with the Squirrel”, a masterpiece by Hans Holbein, which will now return to London. The exchange is part of Barberini Gallery Director Flaminia Gennari Santori’s strategy of valorising international collaboration, the Roman museum said.
Raphael’s masterpiece was made between 1518 and 1519. It is now back in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini Corsini, Rome, just off Piazza Barberini. It is probable that the picture was in the painter’s studio at his death in 1520, and that it was modified and then sold by his assistant. Because the painting wasn’t commissioned by one of Raphael’s patrons, very little is known about what happened to it following the artist’s death. The most probable theory concludes that the painting remained in the artist’s studio for some time after 1520 and was then sold by Giulio Romano (1499-1546), a pupil of Raphael and Mannerist artist who helped to develop the Mannerist art movement in the 16th century.
The woman is traditionally identified with the fornarina (baker) Margherita Luti, Raphael’s Roman lover who refused to marry him, though this has been questioned. Alternatively, it can be argued that this is not a portrait of a specific woman, but rather Raphael’s interpretation of the belle donne theme and a depiction of a courtesan. Still, another interpretation of who the model is identifies the figure as a witch.
Among the more curious speculations surrounding the woman in the painting is that she suffered from breast cancer. The fact that she is concealing part of her left breast has led some art historians to suggest that she is hiding a cancerous breast tumor.
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