Portrait of Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo, called Dianora (?)

Portrait of Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo, called Dianora, dated 1571 and at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, depicts a member of the Toledo family — the same Spanish noble house as the Duchess Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I — who had extensive connections to the Florentine court. Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo (1553–1576) was the daughter of Garcia Álvarez de Toledo, Viceroy of Catalonia and Sardinia, and the probable identification places this portrait in the context of the Medici-Toledo dynastic alliance. Allori's portrait, produced when he was in his mid-thirties and at the height of his portrait powers, captures the young woman — she would have been about eighteen — within the conventions of aristocratic Florentine portraiture. The Städel's acquisition reflects German museum collecting of Italian Mannerist painting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Oil on canvas with Allori's mature portrait technique fully deployed. The sitter's young age is reflected in the smooth, relatively unlined face, while the formal costume and composed expression place her firmly within the dynastic portrait tradition regardless of her youth.