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Portrait of a Woman with a Book of Music
Oil on panel, 103.2 × 80.3 cm, by Bacchiacca, c. 1540–45
J.P. Getty Museum


This portrait of an unidentified woman, dressed in a vibrant gown typical of elite Florentine fashion circa 1540, reflects her patrician status. She was possibly from the Frescobaldi banking family. The composition features striking juxtapositions—such as the vivid green tablecloth against her pink dress—and a refined rendering of textures, from embroidered fabric to fur trim, hallmarks of early sixteenth-century Florentine painting. Birds depicted on the tablecloth’s border, identifiable as species Bachiacca was known to illustrate, reinforce his reputation for zoological accuracy, also evident in his tapestries and mural fragments in the Palazzo Vecchio. These details, along with his involvement in luxury production for the Medici, underline the breadth of his work across media. The music held by the sitter, obscured by her hand, is deliberately illegible—Bachiacca, not musically trained, used it as a visual rather than functional element. His use of ambiguous space, dissonant colour contrasts, and sculptural flesh tones reflects the influence of Agnolo Bronzino’s Medici portraits.