Bust of a Young Woman

Raffaellino del Garbo, a Florentine painter trained under Filippino Lippi, created this bust of a young woman around 1487. Active in Florence during the era of Savonarola and the Medici, Raffaellino produced altarpieces and portraits that combined the grace of Filippino with elements borrowed from Perugino and the young Raphael. His career declined after a promising start. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting.

Tempera on panel with delicate modeling of the face and careful attention to the sitter's costume. The soft lighting and idealized features reflect Florentine portrait conventions of the 1480s.