A Young Lady of Fashion

Attributed to Paolo Uccello and held in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, this portrait of a young woman has been associated with the Florentine practice of profile portraiture that flourished in the mid-fifteenth century. The profile format was the dominant mode for female portraiture in the Italian Renaissance before the three-quarter turn popularised by Flemish influence in the later decades of the century. Such portraits served commemorative, dynastic, and occasionally marital functions, recording the appearance of young women of notable families. The attribution to Uccello is not universally accepted — some scholars have proposed alternative attributions — but the work belongs clearly within the Florentine portrait tradition of the 1440s–1460s. The Gardner Museum, with its remarkable collection assembled by Isabella Stewart Gardner at the turn of the twentieth century, provides an appropriate setting for this delicate work.

The profile female portrait was executed in tempera on panel, the standard medium for Florentine panel painting of the period. The crisp outline of the profile is characteristically sharp, with careful delineation of the elaborate headdress typical of mid-century Florentine fashion. The flat gold or plain background eliminates spatial depth, focusing attention entirely on the sitter's silhouetted form.