Vittoria Colonna, Sebastiano del Piombo

Vittoria Colonna, Sebastiano del Piombo (1525)

An arrogant and enigmatic lady turns her eyes on the observer while her left index finger points to an open book. Her right hand rests on her breast and in a delightful gesture she inserts the index finger in her bodice, perhaps as an indication of her depth of spirit. The lady's identity is uncertain, but it has been suggested that she might be the poet Vittoria Colonna or Giulia Gonzaga, athough the chronology of the work casts doubts on these identifications. The attributes could match any lady of the time who was a lover of letters. Whoever she was, her gesture clearly denotes the richness and ambiguity of her wisdom.

Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance and early Mannerist periods famous as the only major artist of the period to combine the colouring of the Venetian school in which he was trained with the monumental forms of the Roman school.