Portrait of a young woman known as "La Bella"

Palma Vecchio's Portrait of a Young Woman known as "La Bella," painted around 1519 and now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, is one of his most celebrated idealized female portraits. Palma Vecchio developed a distinctive type of sensuous, golden-haired Venetian beauty that became enormously popular. These half-length female portraits, with their low-cut dresses and flowing blonde hair, represent an ideal of female beauty specific to Venetian Renaissance culture.

Palma Vecchio renders the idealized beauty with his signature warm, golden flesh tones and broad brushwork, using the low-cut dress and flowing hair to create the characteristically sensuous Venetian female type.