ラ・ベッラ

A young woman in a blue dress glows against the dark, gold at her throat and a fur over her arm. Nearly five centuries on, no one can say for certain who she was.

The story behind the painting

La Bella, "the beautiful one", is a portrait of a woman painted by Titian in the 1530s and now in the Galleria Palatina of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Its date rests on a letter. On 2 May 1536, Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, wrote to his agent in Venice asking that Titian finish "that portrait of that woman in a blue dress", with everything made beautiful and with a protective curtain. The painting is first recorded in the della Rovere collection at the Ducal Palace of Pesaro in an inventory of 1623/24, and it came to Florence in 1631 as part of the inheritance of Vittoria della Rovere.

What to look for

She stands as a three-quarter figure against a dark background, in a blue dress with a low neckline and rich gold ornaments. With her left hand she points to a zibellino, a sable fur, draped over her right forearm. Look at how the composition is strict and formal, like Titian's courtly portraits of the 1530s, while the face carries every ideal of beauty of the time, with perhaps one small exception noted by scholars: her blond hair is only of a "medium" shade. The same head seems to reappear in Titian's Girl in a Fur, Girl with Feather Hat and Venus of Urbino, all from these same few years.

Meaning and intent

Who was she? The question has produced several answers. Moritz Thausing proposed Eleonora Gonzaga, the duke's wife, but this is rejected today, since the duke would hardly call his own wife "that woman". Leandro Ozzola suggested Isabella d'Este, Eleonora's mother, who had asked Titian at this very time for a rejuvenated, idealised portrait of herself when she was over sixty. That idea would explain the anonymous wording, but it competes with Isabella in Black in Vienna, which is also claimed to be that commission. Readings of her as a courtesan fail, the source says, because the composition is a strict portrait.

Legacy

The duke's letter hints that La Bella was a model for "the others", which scholars take to be Girl in a Fur, Girl with Feather Hat and the Venus of Urbino. X-rays of Girl in a Fur reportedly show underpainting related both to La Bella and to Titian's portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga. So this calm woman in blue sits at the start of a small family of paintings in which the same features grow more and more sensual. Whether she was a duchess, an idealised mother-in-law or simply an ideal of beauty, she remains one of Titian's most quietly magnetic faces.